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A HOME ENTERPRISE 





A HOME ENTERPRISE 


A STUDY OF HOME MISSIONS —— 


BY 
JOHN wW.HORINE, D.D. 


PROFESSOR OF EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY IN THE SOUTHERN LUTHERAN 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA 


The third of a series of ‘Key Books,” prepared under the 
general editorship of the Rev. F. H. Knubel, D.D., LL.D., 
and the Rev. M. G. G. Scherer, D.D. 





THE UNITED LUTHERAN PUBLICATION HOUSE 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
1925 


CopyricuTt, 1925; By 
THE BoarD OF PUBLICATION OF 
THe Unitep LuTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA 





MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PREFACE 


In the preparation of this book the writer has 
availed himself of whatever sources of information 
he could lay his hands on. Only so it bore a Home 
Mission label, all has been grist which came to his 
mill. Especially have the files of THE LUTHERAN and 
the reports of Boards been frequently and freely used. 
From them much material has been transferred bod- 
ily to these pages. In few instances has the transfer 
been accompanied with quotation marks. But to all 
contributors of material, with or without their knowl- 
edge and consent, the writer is obliged and grateful. 
If this book has any merit and if it performs the serv- 
ice which is hoped of it, the result will be largely due 
to the record of achievement made by the several 
Home Mission Boards and by the home missionaries 
themselves, including the General and Synodical 
Superintendents. May God our Saviour bless the 
book and use it for the upbuilding of His Church and 
the inbringing of His Kingdom! 

JOHN W. HORINE. 
3 


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CONTENTS 


A HOME ENTERPRISE 
PRB A CHT och. caceckanees 


CHAPTER I 
LTR POULIN DATION vtavovecetisehin Suskiog edid oct cenavs esounsuei yeues 


CHAPTER II 

Dag ec eg Cy ui AC ER AE SN ae AAs oe pee A 
CHAPTER III 

Le SB. Ea ec tan epee pac oh aaa eonh SE RE RO eteel chine 
CHAPTER IV 

PTS TEENS COON TIN PED ) 9 casiaceeseccc.csos sekoateas. snaascuteoasbalenuoess 


CHAPTER V 
BO IC Te Re ER eR, eR SB OLS 


CHAPTER VI 
Wey AEN ANCES 8 o25, svcdios rion retel teaseseaaveawneees Fete eandbess 


CHAPTER VII 
AT PRUE CT AGEL cnsars taicracsanensanase cstiaerer dagss 


CHAPTER VIII 
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A Home Enterprise 


CHAPTER I 
ITS FOUNDATION 


The title of this Home Mission study book is “A 
Home Enterprise.” That sounds like the running of 
a small business in the home community; moreover, 
it has a commercial smack about it. Things are not 
always as they seem. In reality this book treats of 
the running of the biggest kind of business in the 
home country, and the “smack” about it is not com- 
mercial but evangelical—in fact, it is Evangelical 
Lutheran, which is to say, Gospel and Christian. It 
is certainly “big business” which is here in prospect; 
in all the world there is no bigger business than that 
of gospelizing and Christianizing the world. The 
object of this book is to relate the part our Evangelical 
Lutheran Church, or, more narrowly, our United 
Lutheran Church in America, has taken, is taking and 
ought to take in the enterprise. 

Observe those two closing statements. One is that 
the missionary enterprise is the primary business of 
the Christian Church. The Church’s second duty is 
to “build up” its members in the faith and truth and 
spirit of Christ its Head; but before it can build 

7 


8 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


them up in Him, so that they become a holy temple 
in the Lord, it must gather the many separate living 
stones. These do not always lie ready to hand; they 
are not ready to roll themselves onto the foundation 
or leap up to their place in the walls. They must 
be gone after and found. They must be sought and 
brought and then shaped and prepared before they 
can be inserted in the churchly structure and become 
members of “The Holy Christian Church, the Com- 
munion of Saints.” 

So it has been from the very beginning. The word 
“mission” itself, as the dictionary defines it, means “a 
sending, or being sent or delegated by authority to 
perform some service or function or to transact cer- 
tain business.” It is not necessarily a religious 
word (anyone can be sent on any kind of a mission) ; 
indeed, it does not occur in the Bible at all. But its 
foundation is there. The thing is there in our present 
Christian meaning of it, and it began to be there when 
God sent His only begotten Son into the world to be 
the Saviour of the world, to be the propitiation for 
our sins, that we might live through Him. This was 
the momentous mission on which He was sent, the 
transcendent business on which He came. And how 
did He go about it? By seeking and saving that 
which was lost. It is true that He was not sent, in 
the first instance, but unto the lost sheep of the house 
of Israel, but He went from city to city, from village 
to village, throughout every countryside, seeking them 
and finding them, and when He found them He sent 
them forth on a similar errand—indeed, before He 
sent them more than one undertook such a mission of 





ITS FOUNDATION 9 


his own accord, as when Andrew found first his own 
brother Simon and Philip found Nathanael. Certainly 
Christianity itself is a mission and Christ Himself is 
a missionary, God’s missionary to men, heaven’s mis- 
Sionary to earth. Missions is not a modern fad, the 
hobby of a feverish few. Missions is as old as the 
Gospel of Christ; it is the work of the whole Church 
of Christ, and if the Church were ever to cease to be 
missionary it would cease to be evangelical and Chris- 
tian. One has well said: “The Church which is not 
a missionary Church will be a missing Church during 
the next fifty years—its candle of consecration put 
out; if not, its candlestick removed out of its place. 
As ministers and churches of Jesus Christ, our self- 
preservation is conditioned on the obedience to the 
great commission. It is preach or perish, evangelize 
or fossilize.”’ 

The other statement to which attention is called is 
the part taken by our United Lutheran Church in 
America in the missionary enterprise. We have just 
learned that the work of missions is the duty of the 
whole Church, and we should rejoice that almost the 
whole Church is alert and active—even the Roman 
Catholic Church. When we look out over the vast 
Mohammedan world and over the more vast heathen 
world and when we survey the many millions of un- 
churched and unchristian people on our own continent 
and in our own land, we ought to be apostolic enough 
to rejoice with Saint Paul that “in every way, whether 


_ in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.” We 
_ ought to rejoice greatly that Protestant Churches are 
| diligent in doing their missionary duty, and more 


10 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


greatly still that our Evangelical Lutheran Churches 
are not slothful in the business of evangelizing the 
world and extending the Kingdom; but we rejoice 
most greatly that our own United Lutheran Church 
in America not only by resolution has pledged herself 
to the cause of missions but also with resolution is 
addressing herself to the performance of the mission- 
ary task. In Article VI of its Constitution, the United 
Lutheran Church declares one of the objects of its 
organization to be “the extension of the Kingdom of 
God by Home, Foreign and Inner Missions.” What 
the United Lutheran Church has done and is doing in 
this behalf we shall learn later on; but just here, in 
passing, we need to note two important facts: that 
our own Church is a partner in the great mission 
enterprise, and that any member thereof who is idle 
and unproductive is a “workman” that needs to be 
ashamed. He is both disloyal to Mother Church and 
recreant in his duty to his Lord. 

Notice again that extract from the Constitution of 
the United Lutheran Church. . Its opening words are 
themselves a good definition of Christian missions, 
“the extension of the Kingdom of God.” And the 
order of the words next following is significant—‘‘by 
Home, Foreign and Inner Missions.” The language 
recognizes the fact that missions are tripartite, a 
trinity, as it were, three and yet one, like a clover leaf 
or fleur-de-lis. One thing is sure: to the mind of 
Jesus it was just—missions. It was Home Missions 
when He preached the Gospel in Judea and Galilee; 
it was Foreign Missions when He dealt with the alien 
Syro-Phceenician woman and the Greeks who came to 





ITS FOUNDATION 11 


Him at the last; it was Inner Missions when He went 
about doing good, healing the sick and restoring the 
maimed; but altogether and always it was simply 
missions, “‘the extension of the Kingdom of God.” 
It has been only since the mission field has so widely 
broadened and missionary operations have become 
so diversified, that the work of missions has become 
departmentalized. Practical wisdom demanded it. 
Only by such a division and distribution of the work 
could it be efficiently administered. But missions itself 
remains one, a single enterprise, and (as a rule) takes 
a verb in the singular number. One phase or feature 
of the work is not to be pitted or played off against 
another. All three start from the same source—the 
command and example of Christ—and seek to attain 
the same goal, the salvation of souls and the exten- 
sion of His kingdom. 

At the same time, it is significant that Home Mis- 
sions is named first. Naturally, Home Missions was 
first in the order of time. Christianity began at 
Jerusalem. It was obliged to get a foothold in the 
Lord’s homeland and the scene of His earthly labors 
before it could proceed with its message to other and 
distant lands. So the center of the circle was placed 
in Jerusalem and the circle was widened—as strong 
sources or bases of supplies both of men and means 
were established—to include all Judea and Samaria 
and so, gradually, Europe on the west, Africa on the 
south, and eventually “the uttermost part of the 
earth.” The growth of the Christian Church was 
organic, not spasmodic or sporadic. It was in this 
way that what began as foreign mission churches, 


12 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


that is, churches in foreign parts, soon became home 
mission churches, or rather they became planters and 
promotors of home mission churches in their own land, 
themselves being centers and sources from which went 
out streams of missionary influence and_ effort 
throughout their own territory and beyond their own 
borders to lands more remote. Home missions and 
foreign missions proceeded with an equal step, almost 
by the law of cause and effect, and, of course, the 
inner mission was not neglected. The manifold works 
of charity and mercy which characterized the early 
Church furnish ground for a comparison not at all 
flattering to the Church of today. 

So itis now. The fact of the business is that for- 
eign missions anywhere in the world are inaugurated 
and sustained by a Church established somewhere at 
home, and not only can the home Church not grow in 
numbers, in strength and resources, without the in- 
crease which comes to it through the planting of home 
mission churches, but, lacking such increment and 
enlarged power and capacity, its efforts on behalf of 
foreign missions are enfeebled and ultimately must 
dwindle and fail. So interrelated and interdependent 
are these two branches of Christian service. They 
belong and go together—Home Missions in the lead. 
This is why Austin Phelps once said: “If I were a 
missionary in Canton, China, my first prayer every 
morning would be for the success of American Home 
Missions, for the sake of Canton, China.” Again he 
said: “I confess that the Home work does loom up 
before me with a painful and threatening magnitude, 
which suggests the query whether it is reasonable to 





HOLY TRINITY, MADISON, WIS. 


A Product of Home Mission Enterprise 





CALVARY ELMHURST CHAPEL 


gir Mee 





EVANSTON, ILL. 





PORTAGE PARK CHAPEL WOODLAWN IMMANUEL 


Chicago and Vicinity Mission Fruitage 


ee am a 


af 


ITS FOUNDATION 13 


4 


expect much expansion of the foreign service before 
the home field is more thoroughly mastered. There is 
a law of give and take in these things which is as 
inexorable in the work of the world’s conversion as 
in any other. We cannot convert Asia without a 
certain amount of spiritual power at home. We can- 
not give what we have not received. And the power 
at home must come from a broader and deeper spirit- 
ual culture, and this must take time, money, labor and 
prayer. What other view of it can be either philo- 
sophical or scriptural? ‘Beginning at Jerusalem,’ such 
was our Lord’s direction to the apostles at the outset 
of the great work. This is the central law of missions 
for all time. We must keep the Home work well in 
hand, and uplifted above all chance of failure, or we 
cannot get power to impart truth to the heathen 
mind.” Dr. E. B. Hurlbut has said: “Are we seek- 
ing the world’s salvation? We must lay the basis of 
our tremendous undertaking in Christianized America. 
A wise interest and earnest zeal for Foreign Missions 
compels intense enthusiasm for Home Missions. The 
battle lost at home, our cause is slain abroad. Chris- 
tianity failing in America, it is irretrievably lost in 
Asia and Africa. Christianity persistent in America 
will conquer the world for Christ.” No less than 
others, our own veteran Lutheran missionaries are 
convinced of this fundamental truth. Said the vener- 
able Dr. A. 8. Hartman: “As a part of the Church of 
Christ, and thus identified with the work of the King- 
dom of God, we cannot but be deeply interested in 
the progress of that Kingdom in the world. But if 
the Church of which we are thus a part is to be effect- 


14 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


ive in the salvation of all the world it must first show 
its effectiveness in bringing to a knowledge of the 
truth the unevangelized in our own land. In propor- 
tion as the Church gains power and increases in spir- 
itual influence among the people of this country, it 
will have a more earnest desire and greater ability 
to extend its ministry of the Gospel to the unevan- 
gelized of other lands, and it will also have more men 
and women to go as missionaries. It is for this rea- 
son that Home Missions are regarded as fundamental 
for the life and growth of the Church in this country, 
and also as the ‘base of supplies’ for the work of 
propagating the Gospel in the religiously destitute re- 
gions beyond. Missions are spoken of as a business 
enterprise, Home Missions representing the plant and 
the evangelization of the unchristian world the busi- 
ness. If the business is to be increased the plant must 
be enlarged and adequately equipped.” In other 
words, if today the 3,800 churches in the United 
Lutheran Church in America are conducting Foreign 
Missions on an enlarged scale, it is because a large 
proportion of the 3,800 churches, probably three- 
fifths, began their existence as home missions and owe 
their growth into strength to the initial aid and fos- 
tering care of the Home Mission Enterprise. Just 
so, Inner Missions and every other benevolent cause 
in the Church are dependent in large measure for in- 
creased income and larger success on the planting 
of new churches, which is accomplished through Home 
Mission agency. 

There remain two further observations to be noted. 
The first one is in connection with the “business” of 


ITS FOUNDATION 15 
Home Missions, a word which has been used in the 
foregoing paragraphs more than once. The word it- 
self simply means busy-ness, that which one is dili- 
gent or industrious about. If it is a secular thing, it 
is “business” as we commonly understand it; for just 
as, in the currency of speech, this material world has 
derived ‘‘wealth” from ‘weal,’ making a man’s wel- 
fare to consist in his bank account and calling him 
“wealthy” who is “well to do,” so has the money-mak- 
ing business world appropriated and almost monopol- 
ized the word ‘“‘business,” applying it to its own uses 
and purposes—so much so, that when the Bible de- 
scribes as “business” a religious enterprise or under- 
taking, the word seems almost profane, at least irrev- 
erent and out of place. Nevertheless, the Bible does 
not hesitate to speak of “the King’s business,” and we 
hear the youthful Jesus say, “I must be about my 
Father’s business,” and we read what an apostle 
wrote: “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; 
serving the Lord.” The fact of the matter is that 
God’s business demands and deserves diligence and 
devotion, including this business of missions. Daniel 
Crawford, for 22 years a missionary in Africa, used 
to say that “Christianity is more than ‘let us sing 
hymn 297.’” The reason why the work of missions, 
at home and abroad, has lagged and dragged is be- 
cause in this service of the Lord the spirit of so many 
of His servants has not been hot with fervor and they 
have consequently been but slothful in the business. 
The like sloth in their own business would likewise 
have kept it small and probably would have wrecked 
it altogether. ‘Playing at missions” is no meaning- 


16 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


less phrase. When one considers the hundreds of 
millions of Christians and the almost unlimited re- 
sources at their command, and then considers the 
absence of busy-ness on their part when the great 
cause of missions is concerned, one wonders how they 
can reconcile their consciences with the vows they 
have made and the pledges they have given. Nor is this 
poor dying rate at which the Gospel is made known 
and the Kingdom is brought in a modern phenomenon. 
Christian people have been selfish and slothful from 
the earliest times, and a student of the Bible and of 
history has gone so far as to say that “it may be what 
seems the postponement of the final glory of the 
Church beyond the limits of the period at which it 
appeared to New Testament writers about to be real- 
ized, may be due to the backward conduct of the 
Church, to her slackness in evangelizing the world, 
and to her want of faith and little readiness for the 
heavenly state.” 

Another thing to be noticed is that this business of 
bringing the Gospel of Christ to men and bringing 
men into the Kingdom of Christ is, in spite of all 
hindrances, a going concern. It has gone on from 
the beginning, but not under its own momentum. To 
do business you have to do business. You have to 
make it go. That is why we speak of “running” a 
business. It will not run itself. You have to get 
behind it and push it and “run” it. And just so it 
is with this business of gathering souls into the heav- 
enly garner. As we learned a while ago, the mis- 
sionaries themselves were the “‘sent”’ and the mission 
was the errand on which they went. One has said 


ITS FOUNDATION 17 


that the Gospel itself has “Go” in it, and he adduces 
the parting command of the ascending Lord. That is 
so, but undesignedly so. At least it is true that the 
Lord did say “Go” to His disciples, and He said it 
more than once. His first recorded words to them, 
after completing the roll, was a missionary commis- 
sion in these words: “Go not into the way of the Gen- 
tiles and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not, 
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 
And His last words, spoken on the very mount of the 
Ascension, were likewise missionary in their charac- 
ter and aim. As St. Matthew records them: “All 
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go 
ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.” 
As St. Mark records them: “Go ye into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to the whole creation.” And 
in The Acts St. Luke has this record: “But ye shall 
receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; 
and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and 
in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost 
part of the earth.” Certainly, and even literally, the 
missionary enterprise is a “going concern.” Called 
and commissioned disciples still go, and the work goes 
on. Workmen still offer themselves and they are tire- 
lessly on the go. It is they, along with their supporters, 
who, under God, make the concern continue to go. And 
they who go to the work in the homeland are not less 
true missionaries of the Cross; for the homeland, too, 
is a part of “all the world.” 

So we reach the question why we Christians, why 
we Lutherans, should take an active part in this Home 


18 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Mission Enterprise. A few reasons are herewith indi- 
cated, as briefly as possible. 

1. Because loyalty to our King and the Captain of 
our salvation demands it. His command constitutes 
our duty. To disobey it is to be recreant to duty and 
unfaithful to Him. 

2. Because of the greatness and urgency of the 
need—as this will later appear in a survey of the field. 

3. Because Christ has redeemed the world and has 
a right to it. He is the Saviour of all men, specially 
of them that believe. ‘‘The Gospel of forgiveness is 
now the Church’s central word, and it is the main- 
spring of its aggressive work. The Church can only 
be missionary as it is remissionary. This must always 
be the mainspring of missions, as it is the marrow 
of the Gospel. You may always measure the value to 
yourselves of Christ’s cross by your interest in 
missions.” 

4. Because of the immeasurable value of every 
human soul, reclaimed from sin and perdition and 
won to life with God in heaven. 

5. Because of the peril of misusing the power of 
the Holy Spirit which we have received in the gifts 
of knowledge and faith. They who have must give. 
They who know and believe the Gospel must go and 
teach it, or send and support its preachers and teach- 
ers. Paul said to the elders of the Church of Ephe- 
sus, “I kept back nothing that was profitable unto 
you.” This idea of “keeping back” is most expressive. 
“Ananias and Sapphira ‘kept back part of the price,’ 
and we know their fate; Paul ‘kept back nothing,’ 
and we know with what exultancy he looked forward 


ITS FOUNDATION 19 


to his crown. The goats kept back the bread and 
water, and they went into everlasting punishment; 
the sheep kept nothing back, and they entered into 
life eternal.” 

6. Because it is in this way that we become “fel- 
low-helpers for the truth.” 

7. Because of the constraining love of Christ. 
“Love to Christ is inseparable from love to Christ’s 
work and Christ’s Kingdom, which embraces the 
whole human race.” 

8 Because we are in this world not simply to hold 
and enjoy a faith, but to propagate a faith. ‘“‘Chris- 
tianity is very particularly to be considered as a trust, 
deposited with us on behalf of mankind, as well as 
for our own instruction.” ‘Woe be to him that in 
time of famine has bread, and lets men starve because 
he will not part with it! Woe be to him that in time 
of plague has medicine, and lets men die untended! 
Double woe be to him who has been enlightened of 
God, and lets men perish because he will not take, by 
the authority of God, the light that he has received 
and carry it to them!” 

9. Because salvation is through Christ alone. It 
has been truly said that missionary enterprise is at 
once wasteful and impertinent if the Christian reli- 
gion is not necessary to every child of Adam. Paul 
was familiar with all the civilization, all the culture, 
all the religious cults of his day, and yet he said, “We 
are debtors both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians.” 
He well knew that there is none other name under 
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. 
And so we who have the one saving Gospel owe men 


20 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


the Gospel. We owe it to them whether they are 
richer or poorer than we are or of higher or lower 
social standing; we owe it to their hunger and thirst 
of soul which is seldom, if ever, quite lost, so that they 
cease to be recoverable. 

10. Because it is our duty to work as well as to 
pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Christ 
has taught us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” but He 
has also commanded us to go forth and serve Him 
with a view to hastening its coming. This is the true 
motive of Christian missions. Christ’s Kingdom is to 
come here, to this earth which sin has defiled and on 
which sinful men dwell, and this was the fact which 
underlay the missionary command of Christ. “To 
bring about this consummation is the task of every 
Christian, so far as his power and opportunity go. 
It is the great motive of the Christian Church. It is 
the great motive which animates God and Christ and 
the Holy Spirit.” 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


1. What is the object of this book? 

2. What is the primary business of the Christian Church? 

3. What is the meaning of the word “mission”? Is this 
meaning found in the Bible? 

4, Is the United Lutheran Church pledged to partnership in 
the missionary enterprise? 

5. What is a good definition of Christian missions? What of 
their “trinity” and unity? 

6. Which department of Christian missions was first in the 
order of time? 


7. How does the strengthening of the Church at home conduce 
to strengthening missions abroad? 


ITS FOUNDATION 21 


. How is the word “business” in connection with missions to 


be interpreted? 


. In what sense is the business of missions a “going concern”? 
10. 


Give at least five reasons why Lutheran Christians should 
take an active part in the Home Mission Enterprise. 


CHAPTER II 
ITS FUNCTIONS 


We have already learned that the missionary enter- 
prise has its charter in Scripture and that it is the 
primary business of the Christian Church. It was so 
at the first, even during the Saviour’s own lifetime, 
and it shall be so to the very last; for when the Lord 
gave to His Church the commission to go into all the 
world and make disciples of all the nations, He as- 
sured His followers whom He thus sent forth that all 
power had been given to Him in heaven and earth, 
and He promised them that He would be with them 
in this undertaking to the end of the world. That 
means that there will be missions and missionaries to 
the end of time. 

In other words, missions is the principal function 
of the Christian Church, and it is by this means that 
the Church brings in and establishes the Kingdom of 
God. Remember that a prime object of our United 
Lutheran Church, as set forth in its Constitution, is 
“the extension of the Kingdom of God by Home, For- 
eign and Inner Missions.” Notice there a distinction, 
namely, that missions is a function of the Church and 
not of the Kingdom; missions is an agency of the 
Church for extending the Kingdom. For the Church 
of God and the Kingdom of God are not the same 
thing. They are not identical (test it by saying “Thy 
Church come!” instead of “Thy Kingdom come!’’). 

22 


ITS FUNCTIONS 23 


The Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom in which 
He bears His holy rule. They who obey and serve the 
King are subjects or citizens of His Kingdom and 
know its righteousness and peace and joy. It is the 
true believers, the members of the so-called ‘‘invisible 
Church” who are the members of the Kingdom of 
God. 

Now it was to establish upon earth the Kingdom of 
God that the Saviour came. He also came to establish 
the Church as the institution through which the King- 
dom of God is to be advanced. “The Kingdom is the 
end, and the Church is the means to that end.” And 
the means which the Church employs in extending 
among men the Kingdom of God is misstons—‘‘Home, 
Foreign and Inner Missions.” This is the first func- 
tion of the Church. 

_ So then we come to the question, What is the func- 
tion of missions themselves? A singie general answer 
might be made that the function of all missions— 
Home, Foreign and Inner—is to carry to the whole 
world of men the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
its holy Sacraments, in order that by these saving and 
sanctifying means of grace all mankind might be 
brought to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ 
Jesus—that He is the only begotten Son of God and 
man’s only Saviour, that through the regenerating 
power of the Holy Spirit of God all men may become 
children of God and may pray “Our Father, Who art 
in heaven; Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom 
come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” 
The question, however, needs to be answered more in 
detail, and especially as concerns the function of 


24 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Home Missions, which is the particular subject of our 
study. 

The first function of the Home Mission enterprise 
is the quest for souls. This function, indeed, it has in 
common with Foreign Missions and with Inner Mis- 
sions. It underlies and pervades every other func- 
tion. It is fundamental. It is truly evangelical. 
More, it is evangelistic, in the best sense of that term. 
The work of Home Missions is largely evangelistic in 
its very nature. The home missionary, entering his 
field in city or in country, does not go to serve a well- 
organized, well-ordered congregation, having the 
habit of assembling for worship and taking a pride in 
its house of worship and the decorous character of its 
worship. The most he can hope for is a nucleus of 
faithful members, and his task at once becomes a 
spiritual approach to and attack upon the surrounding 
mass of the cold and careless, the lukewarm and in- 
different. He is seeking their souls, the salvation of 
their souls—that first of all; and so he accosts and 
solicits them personally, visits them in their homes, 
secures, if he can, their attendance at the services, and 
then and there he brings to bear on them the Gospel 
of Christ with true evangelistic fervor and appeal. 
But all this is done not with the primary purpose to 
“puild up a church” or “make a success of it,” but 
from the motive which moved the Saviour Himself in 
His mission to men—to save lost souls and win them 
to life with Himself in His Kingdom. Actuated by 
such a love for souls and for their Saviour, the home 
missionary performs his arduous task; and this un- 
selfish aim of his and his patient accomplishment of 


ITS FUNCTIONS 25 


it serves to define and describe his own function and 
that of the entire Home Mission enterprise. 

Of course, in the fulfillment of this function the 
Home Mission authorities use sanctified common 
sense. The home missionary is not sent where the 
numbers are few and the need is small. Therefore the 
Home Mission Boards use a wise discretion and ap- 
portion or allocate their available supplies of men and 
means according to the more or less pressing demands, 
as well as the more or less promising fields. It is true 
that it is a part of their duty and practice to search 
out and discover communities which are destitute of 
the ministrations of the Church and of the true Gos- 
pel, but in this great and growing country (including 
Canada, in which our Home Mission operations are 
carried on) in which no less than half of its 115,000,000 
of people are entirely outside the Church of Christ 
and make no profession of the Christian faith, needy 
fields fairly jump to meet the eye of the attentive ob- 
server. Such patent, clamant fields are the suburbs 
of our great cities and the down-town and run-down 
sections of the same cities, and their “foreign” dis- 
tricts as well; wide, unoccupied spaces in the rural 
sections; the extensive frontier districts of our coun- 
try and its island possessions; the mining regions and 
lumber camps, and especially the multiplying and 
rapidly growing manufacturing cities and towns. To 
a very large extent the evangelization of these un- 
churched millions must be entrusted to the Home Mis- 
sion cause. The Church alone is the chosen agency 
to do this and Home Missions is the Church’s instru- 
ment for its accomplishment. 


26 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


A second and related function, therefore, of the 
Home Mission enterprise, following that of the quest 
for souls, is to enter new and needy fields and plant 
and foster churches wherever souls are found in spir- 
itual want. Notice that it is not said, “Lutheran” 
souls. Time was when our Lutheran Home Mission 
enterprise was restricted almost exclusively (and 
almost necessarily) to the so-called “diaspora,” that 
is, Lutherans dispersed throughout the land in groups 
or colonies. But that time has almost passed. Our 
Church has caught a larger vision of duty and respon- 
sibility and is better prepared to do her whole duty 
when opportunity points out the way. It is true that 
her first duty is to the scattered children of her own 
household of faith. It begins there, but it does not 
end there. The mission of the Church is to be mission- 
ary; her chief business is to save the lost through the 
Gospel, and the lost millions untouched by the agen- 
cies of divine grace are recognized as the proper and 
providential objects of her spiritual care. They form 
a large and fruitful field, and its cultivation is abso- 
lutely necessary for the extension of the Kingdom. 
When our Lord said, “Go, and disciple all the nations,” 
His words included all the people of all the nations. 

A home missionary, then, in his quest for souls, 
has come into such a shepherdless, churchless commun- 
ity in city, town or country. First he announces his 
arrival through the usual channels of publicity and 
makes known the time and place for the church serv- 
ices. Then he makes a canvass of the neighborhood, 
beginning with the Lutherans resident there, and 
known to be there, for he can easily ascertain their 


ITS FUNCTIONS 27 


names and addresses. Just as Saint Paul on his mis- 
sionary tours was wont to visit the synagogues and 
seek an entrance for the Gospel among the devout 
Jews and proselytes there assembled, so the modern 
missionary will seek to gain a foothold for himself 
and his mission by recruiting the men and women of 
his own faith. But then he extends his canvass. He 
invites to the services and renews, repeatedly renews 
the invitation. He asks for and persists and at length 
secures the children of non-churchgoers for the Sun- 
day school. The work is under way. The Sunday 
school enrollment increases, the membership list 
grows. Now it (either one or both) numbers over 
a hundred. From this time the increase becomes more 
rapid. And now ancient history repeats itself and the 
Lord adds to them day by day those that are being 
saved. The Home Mission enterprise is functioning 
successfully, and mission pastor and congregation 
unite in thanksgiving to God. 

Now it may be that a Home Mission secretary or 
other salaried executive has taken the preliminary 
steps and done the pioneer work. If so, he is followed 
by the missionary pastor. In either case, whether the 
missionary himself is first on the field and breaks the 
ground or whether he takes up the work begun by 
another, he must be furnished—and this is still a third 
function of the Home Mission enterprise. Pastors of 
mission churches do not grow out of the ground like 
grass or grain, neither do they fall down from the 
clouds like snow and rain. They must be born, grow 
up, feel called to the ministry of the Word, be educated 
at college and be prepared at a theological seminary. 


28 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Then they offer themselves to the Church for service 
and when examined and approved they are ordained 
to the office of the holy ministry. Then comes the call 
to a definite field of labor. Perhaps the church call- 
ing a pastor is not a mission church. Very well. Then 
the call may go direct to the available candidate or 
it may be mediated by and with the good offices of the 
president of the district synod. But if it is a mission 
church which is calling a pastor, the call is seldom 
sent direct. If such a church is located on the terri- 
tory of a district synod, the president of the synod or 
a standing committee of the synod will first be con- 
sulted and then the call will go forward with synod- 
ical endorsement, after the approval of the appropriate 
Home Mission Board has first been obtained; for 
synod or Board (or both) has a financial stake in the 
mission and is concerned that no mistake in the selec- 
tion of a pastor be made, such as would cripple or set 
back the work. If, however, the mission church call- 
ing a pastor is not yet organized, or rather, if it is 
not so much a church as a fertile and needy field pre- 
senting a first-rate opportunity and calling aloud 
through certain interested individuals for occupation 
and development, then the call for a minister to come 
and inaugurate and organize a church at that place 
may be directed to the synodical officers or to the 
proper Home Mission Board itself. In any event, first 
or last, a function of the Home Mission enterprise, 
allied with that of seeking the salvation of souls and 
gathering them into a congregation for the adminis- 
tration and reception of the means of grace, is the 
function of furnishing ministers to such mission 


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a SIN 
VdGVNVO ‘LNIOdNVO LV NOISSIW ‘XVUITVH ‘NOILLOMUUNSAY AO HOUNHSD 








HUNGARIAN IMMIGRANTS 





INCOMING IMMIGRANTS 
A Source of Supply and an Urgent Mission Problem 





ITS FUNCTIONS 29 


churches. Whoever may be the proper officials having 
the matter in charge, they call to mind and keep in 
mind suitable consecrated men who have the Spiritual 
gifts and the natural grit to man a mission station, 
work hard and endure hardship, in order that there 
the Word of God may be proclaimed and the Sacra- 
ments administered, and that there the Kingdom of 
God may be extended. 

But this is only a part of this function. The mission 
authorities are called upon to furnish not only men 
but also money toward their support and the support 
of their work. Small and struggling missions must 
receive pecuniary as well as pastoral aid. In their 
beginnings they are too weak, their members are too 
few, to assume the whole financial burden. There is 
no manna provided for ministers and their clothes 
wil wear out. And they will marry and have fami- 
lies, and there are mouths to feed and bodies to clothe 
and rent to pay—and a minister above all other men 
must pay his way. Unpaid bills destroy his influence 
alike in the church and in the community. And then 
there are the expenses connected with the young con- 
gregation—a lot to be purchased, a house of worship 
to be built, furniture to be installed, repairs to be 
made, light and fuel bills to be paid, not to speak of 
insurance and the salary of an organist, of a sexton, 
and many things more. You see, we are touching on 
the “business” of Home Missions, sure enough, or 
what might be called the business end of it. Well, 
what do the Mission Boards or other governing auth- 
orities do? They do what a capable parent would do 
to launch his son in business, or what an enterprising 


30 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


firm will do to establish a branch in a new center : 
they extend financial aid until the mission churches 
attain sufficient strength to assume their own support. 
Never mind just now the sources from which their 
income is derived. 'The money comes in and is appro- 
priated to the various missions in various amounts 
according to their various needs. But year by year, 
as the struggling mission gains its feet and stands 
more firmly upon them, it leans less heavily on the 
sustaining Board. Gradually the annual grant is 
reduced, until at length the glad day comes when the 
mission church ceases to be a mission and becomes 
a self-supporting church. Nor does it only now begin 
to contribute to the aid of new or remaining mission 
churches. Since its inception and the payment of its 
first synodical apportionment, it has been nobly and 
unselfishly assisting in the support of other mission 
churches like itself. 

This leads on and over to a fourth function of the 
Home Mission enterprise. To the quest for souls, the 
gathering of them into congregations, the furnishing 
them with pastors and means for maintenance, must 
be added the extending of needed help to missions in 
building their churches. This function is exercised 
by the Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
sion, the particular sphere of Church Extension being 
defined to be this: “To give such advice and offer such 
financial assistance to the new congregation as it may 
require in the erection of a suitable house of worship.” 
When a mission congregation has been gathered, 
proper equipment must be provided, and it is the ex- 
ception to the rule when a mission can procure it un- 


ITS FUNCTIONS 31 


aided. In its last report (1924) the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension stated that 200 con- 
gregations had been aided in the two years last past, 
75 congregations helped with loans for buildings or 
other property, at an outlay of $283,000. The Church 
Extension funds now loaned to missions total almost 
$1,000,000. The Board also reported that 49 missions 
became self-supporting in the two years, releasing 
$20,000 for other work. 

The importance of this fourth and final function 
can scarcely be overestimated. It is last, but not least. 
Neither the evangelistic effort out of which the mis- 
sion is born, nor the presence of a pastor, nor the 
sustaining arm which upholds the mission in its weak- 
ness, 18 more necessary than the furnishing of the 
funds which are essential at the psychological moment 
of its existence. ‘Whether it ‘sink or swim, survive 
or perish,’ will depend largely upon securing a spirit- 
ual home.” Certainly, a new-born child or even an 
older child has little chance to survive if it has no 
roof over its head. The waif without house or home 
may manage to live, but its stature will be stunted and 
its growth will be slow. But here a difference must 
be made. A child may be born and grow up in almost 
any kind of shelter, but a young mission congregation 
must have a worthier habitation and one more be- 
fitting its Christian name and nature. Its first quar- 
ters may be “any old thing’ that offers itself, or comes 
ready to hand. It may be a room in a private house, 
a public hall, a lodge room, a garage, any place which 
will shelter and seat the people. But such a tempo- 

rary makeshift dare not become or long remain a per- 


32 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


manent arrangement. For two reasons. One is the 
fact that many of the people who are “prospects” as 
members of mission congregations are repelled by 
and refuse to subject themselves to cramped, uncom- 
fortable, unattractive quarters as a place for assembly 
and worship. The other is the fact that a meeting 
place of the character indicated is entirely lacking in 
religious atmosphere. Its whole appearance acts as 
a weight on the wings of the soul. The soul finds it 
difficult to soar aloft to God in sight of that which is 
unsightly; and because such a nondescript place is a 
hindrance rather than a help to devotion, it should be 
replaced as soon as possible by a worthy sanctuary in 
which the glorious Lord may come into the midst of 
His people and in which they may be inspired to wor- 
ship Him in the beauty of holiness. 

Therefore, the sooner a mission church is provided 
with a suitable house of worship, the better for it and 
for all concerned. Such a temple of worship becomes 
a visible embodiment of invisible truth, its very stones 
being vocal with a message from Him who is on high, 
while its spire points to Him in the heavens. “It 
spiritualizes the material by converting it into a 
dwelling-place of the Most High, who, though He 
‘dwelleth not in temples made with hands,’ yet ac- 
cepts such as symbols of His presence and makes the 
house of God a means of communion with His spirit- 
ual worshipers and a center of influence for Christian- 
izing the community. The house of God is a silent 
witness to an invisible presence. It challenges the 
attention of the community, and constitutes a common 
rallying place for the religious life of the people.” 


; 


ITS FUNCTIONS 33 


The pressing problem which first confronts a new 
church and its missionary pastor is a house of wor- 
ship. “A homeless church is a nondescript, which will 
always be punctuated with a question mark, until it 
establishes its character and its right to exist by 
erecting for itself a church home. It is usually the 
supreme test of its vitality. About 90 per cent. of 
the churches of all denominations owe their existence 
to Home Missions and in most cases, other things be- 
ing equal, owe their success to the securing of a house 
of worship at the critical period of their career. Their 
first modest chapel is ordinarily a monument to the 
Home Mission Committee. Their subsequent magnifi- 
cent edifice is to the credit of their own sacrifices and 
spiritual energy.” 

Now it is this very important work which is done 
by the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension. 
Indeed, its importance is expressly designated by the 
addition, in so many words—“and Church Extension.” 
Many a mission church would-have “died a bornin’,” 
or shortly after birth, had this Board not come to its 
aid with funds and provided for it a house of worship 
and congregational home. And the aid is extended 
on the most liberal terms. Loans are made for church 
buildings and lots only upon approved security, and 
for a stated period of not more than five years, with- 
out interest. At the expiration of the stated term, 
such loans automatically bear interest, beginning at 
8 per cent. and increasing at the rate of 1 per cent. 
each year until the legal rate of interest in the State 
in which the congregation is located shall have been 
attained. Many and many a self-supporting and pros- 


34 


A HOME ENTERPRISE 


perous church today, when it looks, materially speak- 
ing, to the rock from which it was hewn, looks to the 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension, from 
which flowed the funds which were essential to its 
establishment. 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


. Distinguish between the Church of God and the Kingdom 


of God. 


. What is the relation of missions to the Church and the 


Kingdom? 


. What is the function of missions themselves? 
. What is the first function of the Home Mission Enterprise? 
. In fulfilling this function what discretion must be exercised 


in entering a field? 


. What is the second function? 
. How does a home missionary go about his work in a new 


field? 


. What is the third function and how is it discharged? 

. Describe an additional feature of this function. 

. What is the fourth function? 

. What is the importance of this fourth function? 

. How is the problem of a church building solved? 

. On what liberal terms is Church Extension aid extended? 


CHAPTER III 
ITS FIELDS 


The field of this Home Enterprise is so vast that 
one must open wide one’s eyes and one’s mind to take 
it all in. Indeed, to get anything like an intelligent 
view of it, one must divide it into separate fields and 
consider its several parts. Then one may group to- 
gether the constituent parts (as children fit together 
the pieces of a puzzle) and obtain a complete map 
or picture. But be it remembered at all times that if 
the field is so vast the opportunities it affords are 
equally vast, not to speak of duties and responsibili- 
ties. Almost immeasurable in its extent, appalling 
‘and appealing in its religious need, it presents to the 
Church a tremendous problem and a stupendous task. 
The Church is challenged to solve the problem and 
perform the task. 

In territorial extent the field comprises the United 
States and Canada. It is bounded on the north by 
the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, 
on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west 
by the Pacific Ocean. It embraces a geographical area 
of 7,336,000 square miles, stretching all the way from 
the semi-tropical West Indies to the frigid zone of 
the Arctic Circle. This immense territory is almost 
equally divided between the two great nations of the 
North American Continent. 

In point of numbers the population of this far-flung 

35 


36 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


field is equally impressive, even overwhelming. After 
all, it is this—and not the immensity of the territory 
and its material resources—which is of special im- 
portance and concern to Christians and the Christian 
Church. Here, in round numbers, are 125,000,000 
souls, 116,000,000 in the United States and 9,000,000 
in Canada. For these many millions Christ also died 
and has obtained for them everlasting salvation. But 
it is a sad and startling fact, when we consider the 
year of our Lord in which we live and our boasted 
Christian civilization, that in our own country nearly 
60,000,000 people, and in Canada probably 5,000,000 
people are outside the Church of Christ and are, to 
all intents and purposes, religiously destitute. They 
are rightly said to be “in a state of spiritual illiteracy 
and religious destitution well nigh as desperate as the 
millions in the gloom of pagan night.” Never before 
in the history of either nation has there been greater 
need or a louder call than today for the enlarging of 
the Home Mission enterprise in its efforts to save the 
souls of men and extend the Kingdom of God. And 
when we remember that apart from the general need 
there are millions with Lutheran antecedents and pre- 
vious church affiliation who are scattered abroad in 
these two countries, churchless and shepherdless, we 
will begin to realize that there is presented to our 
Church an imperative challenge to come to their res- 
cue and bring to them the ministration of the means 
of grace. 

But even the figures already given do not tell the 
whole story. Reliable statistics tell us that there are 
in the United States 27,275,000 young people, nomi- 


ITS FIELDS 37 


nally Protestant, under 25 years of age, who are not 
enrolled in any Sunday school or connected with any 
organization giving religious instruction. These con- 
stitute 66 per cent. of the youth of the nation. Of these 
8,000,000 are growing up in non-church homes. In 
New York State their number is 3,500,000; in Penn- 
sylvania, 2,800,000; in Illinois, 2,000,000; in Ohio, 
1,700,000, and more than a million each in the States 
of Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, and Texas. Not 
only is the rising generation without God and without 
hope in the world, but they constitute a serious men- 
ace to the security and stability of our nation; for 
godlessness is lawlessness, and no nation can long en- 
dure without the fear and faith of the righteous Lord 
of lords who rules over all the peoples of the earth 
from His throne in the heavens. Indeed, the Chris- 
tianization of the nation has in view the patriotic aim 
and end as more than a mere by-product. Our national 
existence is at stake and its preservation and perpetu- 
ation may almost be said to form a fifth function of 
the Home Mission enterprise. The value of the work 
done by the Home Mission Boards in furnishing good 
citizens for the State can scarcely be overestimated. 
“They have followed with the Gospel our shifting and 
constantly migrating populations from the old settle- 
ment to the new, and from the country and small town 
to the city, and kept them Christian. Yea, more, this 
agency has gathered the wandering multitudes that 
have come from distant lands to our shores into its 
schools and churches, and has saved them not only for 
the Church but for the State as well. Home Missions, 
then, and patriotism are joined hand in hand for the 


38 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


salvation of the State. Save America and you save 
the world, for the nations of the world are here!” 

These millions of men, women and children, form- 
ing practically one-half of our population, very largely 
constitute our Home Mission problem. The man of 
little faith will be fairly staggered by the figures and 
factors which enter into it. Only a mountain-removing 
faith can courageously face the issue and accom- 
plish the task—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who 
said, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. 
Go ye, therefore, and disciple all the nations—and, 
lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world.” Without Him the Church can do nothing; 
the enterprise is doomed to certain failure. With 
Him—inspired and sustained by His mighty Spirit— 
His own omnipotent power is released and applied, 
foes are vanquished, difficulties are overcome, con- 
quest is made and His heavenly Kingdom comes. But 
the faith must be the faith which works by love, the 
faith whose good works prove it to be alive and real. 
Given such a divine and kingly Christ, given His mis- 
sionary promise and command, and given a faithful 
Church claiming His promise and obedient to His 
command, then its Home Mission enterprise is His 
enterprise and His will be the victory in spite of hos- 
tile hosts and the gates of hell. 

In a later chapter we shall learn of the Forces which 
are directing and conducting this Home Enterprise, 
but just here it becomes necessary to anticipate that 
subject somewhat. The field is so enormous and diver- 
sified, spread out over so vast an area and presenting 
such a variety of needs, that the United Lutheran 


ITS FIELDS 39 


Church has wisely divided it into departments and 
assigned to each division its proper administrative 
Board. These Home Mission Boards, as at present 
constituted, are the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension, the Northwestern Mission Board, 
the Immigrants Mission Board, the West Indies Mis- 
sion Board, and the Committee on Jewish Missions. 
In the case of the first named board, the Board of 
Home Mission and Church Extension, the territory 
has been divided, for the sake of convenience, into 
four districts, each having a General Superintendent 
—the Eastern District, the Southern District, the Cen- 
tral District, and the Western District. A survey of 
these districts now claims our attention. 


BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS AND CHURCH 
EXTENSION. 


Eastern District. 


This district comprises the synods and States bor- 
dering on the Atlantic Ocean, lying north of Mason 
and Dixon’s Line, extending as far west as the Great 
Lakes and the Ohio River and as far north as Nova 
Scotia and the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec in 
Canada. In this territory was laid the foundation of our 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Here were 
organized the Mother Synod, the Ministerium of Penn- 
sylvania in 1748, and the Ministerium of New York 
in 1786. Here Lutherans first colonized and organ- 
ized into congregations and synods; here they began 
their first missionary operations, founded their first 
educational institutions and institutions of minister- 
ing mercy. It might be supposed, therefore, that 


40 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


after all these years of occupancy the Home Mission 
field would be so thoroughly cultivated as to present 
no need for further activity and effort. But such a 
supposition would be very wide of the mark. The 
field is there and the need is there, and they are there 
for especially two reasons. 

One reason connects itself with the fact that in 
this district are located some of the most populous 
cities in the country—and the trend of population is 
to the cities—cities like Greater New York, Greater 
Philadelphia, Greater Boston, Greater Pittsburgh, 
and cities like Buffalo and Rochester in New York, 
Erie and Altoona in Pennsylvania, Newark and Tren- 
ton in New Jersey; Springfield, Massachusetts; Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island; Portland, Maine; Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire, and in Canada cities like Ottawa, 
Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal. There is, it is true, 
a rural problem, and the smaller towns have needs of 
their own, but the neediest needs are to be found in 
the great and growing cities. This is created, as has 
been indicated, by the influx of large numbers from 
the rural districts and villages and towns, many of 
them Lutherans, who must be sought out and cared 
for. A second reason is found in the fact that the 
incoming multitudes crowd together until there is 
formed in the cities a congested district, whereupon 
relief is found by an exodus to the suburbs, which 
widen out into the open country as the city expands. 
And if a third reason be asked for, the answer is that 
the inflow of a steady and strong stream of immigrants 
constitutes a distinctive mission field and calls for 
due provision of its own. 


ITS FIELDS 41 


To illustrate. Co-operating with the Home Mission 
Board and its District Superintendents are Synodical 
Boards or Committees, some of which have their own 
Missionary Superintendent. Well, recently the Mis- 
sionary Superintendent of the Synod of New York and 
New England, and of the Synod of New York, 
stood in the tower of the sky-scraping Woolworth 
Building in the city of New York, and this is what 
he reports. ‘‘With the aid of a telescope I beheld the 
city and its suburbs for a distance of more than 25 
miles, covering an area containing one-twelfth of the 
total population of the United States. To the north 
I saw beautiful Westchester County, with its four 
cities, forty towns and villages; to the east Brooklyn 
and Long Island with their teeming millions; to the 
south and west New Jersey with its hundreds of 
cities and towns. I was beholding the greatest mis- 
sion field in all the world. Hither have come all the 
nations of the earth, like unto Jerusalem on the day 
of Pentecost. Greater New York has 4,300,000 for- 
eigners and 1,500,000 native born. Thousands of these 
are of Lutheran tradition and extraction. In this 
great field alone there are approximately 600,000 
Lutherans, 450,000 of whom are without church con- 
nection. Before descending I took one sweep of the 
horizon and there came to me the Master’s words, 
‘Behold the fields; they are white already unto the 
harvest. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the la- 
borers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the 
harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his 
harvest.’ ” 

That prayer is being made and it is being answered. 


42 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Our mission agencies in and around New York are 
admirably active (although they say, “We have but 
scratched the surface’) and their work is being abun- 
dantly blessed. To give but a single instance. “A 
year ago we started work in the village of Queens, 
Long Island. On December 31, 1923, we organized 
a congregation of sixty charter members. During the 
winter we worshiped in a little 20 x 24-foot two-car 
garage. To heat it, the men and women brought their 
kerosene stoves. The cars were shoved out on the 
runway, an old crex rug covered the oily floor, and 
the children had to be sent home after Sunday school 
because there was not sufficient room for parents and 
children. On January 17, 1924, we bought a beautiful 
corner lot, 100 x 100 feet, for $5,750. On February 
17, we laid the cornerstone. On Easter Sunday over 
200 people crowded into the little chapel crying, ‘I 
was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the 
house of the Lord.’ ” 

Nor is this all the field or all the need. The matter 
of immigration was touched on a minute ago and was 
cited as a third reason why this Eastern District 
should continue as a needy mission field after so long 
a period of occupation. Perhaps this phase of the 
Subject belongs more properly to the province of the 
Immigrants Mission Board, but a brief glance at it 
just here will not be out of place. The field now 
before us is New England, the land of the Pilgrim 
Fathers, of leadership in education and culture. But 
a great change has taken place in New England dur- 
ing the last fifty years. The Puritan stock is dying 
out and a new racial stock is populating the land of 


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ITS FIELDS 43 


authors and educators and legislators. What is espe- 
cially notable, from the Lutheran point of view, is 
that at least nine racial brands or strands of Luther- 
ans are represented—70,000 Swedes, nearly all of 
Lutheran extraction; 70,000 Germans, probably two- 
thirds Lutheran; 14,000 Finns, 98 per cent. Lutheran; 
8,000 Norwegians and 7,500 Danes, 95 per cent. Luth- 
eran, and some thousands of Letts, Lithuanians and 
Icelanders, nearly all Lutheran. In all the New Eng- 
land cities named in the second paragraph of this 
section there is a strong Lutheran population, which 
is predominantly Scandinavian and German and which 
is Anglicizing or Americanizing with amazing rapid- 
ity. Other Lutheran general bodies are actively at 
work in this field, but the United Lutheran Church 
has scarcely made a beginning. Out of this foreign- 
born population of nearly 200,000 people of Lutheran 
lineage, only about 45,000 have found their way into 
the 200 Lutheran churches in New England. Other 
Protestant bodies see here an inviting field. But the 
Lutheran Church is in a position to do more effective 
work in New England than all the other Protestant 
Churches taken together. “It already preaches the 
Gospel in nine languages and can serve multitudes 
which others cannot reach. But if, after most of this 
immigration has been left untouched for a decade or 
more, it fails to take the children into account (alto- 
gether there are 3,300,000 people unchurched and 
2,360,000 children and youth not in the Sunday 
schools), what else can be expected but a race of 
Americans, once Lutheran, who have practically be- 
come pagans.” 


44 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Certainly the Eastern District remains a needy mis- 
_ sion field; and the field and the need extend all the 
way up to Canada. “The establishment of great manu- 
facturing plants with United States capital and the 
immigration of tens of thousands of American skilled 
laborers and their families to the Dominion justify 
the strong statement that Canada must be cared for 
in a way that will be in accord with the needs of the 
Church of the future in the land which lies immedi- 
ately adjacent and has so much in common with the 
United States. To their Macedonian cry we must 
give favorable response.” At present (1924) 124 
mission churches in this district receive appropriations 
from the Board, in the amount of $66,000. These 
figures could easily be multiplied by five, or even 
ten, if the additional men and means were available. 


Southern District. 


This district embraces the synods and States south 
of Mason and Dixon’s Line, bordering on the Atlantic 
Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and lying east of the 
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, plus the States of Louisi- 
ana and Texas, which lie to the west of the Father of 
Waters. In the vast State of Texas, however, only 
the English Home Mission work belongs to the South- 
ern District of the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension, the German and German-English 
mission work being in charge of the Northwestern 
Mission Board. Just here it may be said that the small 
Texas Synod is prosecuting the work of missions on 
its own territory valiantly and vigorously. Similar 


ITS FIELDS 45 


recognition should be given to the United North Caro- 
lina Synod, which has raised a large Home Mission 
endowment fund and supports two Field Missionaries, 
one in the western and the other in the eastern part 
of the State. The Synod of Virginia employs a Synod- 
ical Superintendent, and even the relatively small 
Georgia Synod has a Home Mission executive in the 
field. 

The Southern District presents a vast and necessi- 
tous mission field. It is true that Lutherans were on 
the ground and even organized into congregations as 
long ago as 1717 and 17 37, but the growth through the 
years has been slow and the increase small. Several 
causes operated to this end. For one thing, the coun- 
try was settled mainly by non-Lutherans and the rela- 
tively few Lutherans have had a hard struggle not to 
be crowded out or absorbed by the surrounding mil- 
lions of other persuasions. For another thing, the 
presence of slave labor in the Old South (which was 
mainly agricultural) presented a bar to the entrance 
of immigrants with little capital, who were obliged to 
work with their own hands and found their social and 
economic environment uncongenial—just as today, 
even in the “new” or “industria]”’ South, the employ- 

_ ment in large numbers of negro laborers and mechanics 
_militates against the coming of many white immi- 
grants. For a third thing, those pioneer Lutherans 
found themselves in widely separated communities 
and faced the very real difficulty of inter-communi- 
cation and co-operation. Add the blow sustained by 
_the South in the outcome of the Civil War, which laid 
and long left the churches and church members finan- 





46 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


cially prostrate, and it will be understood why today 
the numerical strength of the Lutherans in the South 
formerly connected with the United Synod in the 
South is a little less than 60,000. 

Now, distribute 60,000 or even 100,000 Lutherans 
over this district, which covers an area equal to that 
of the New England and Middle Atlantic States, 
and it will easily be seen that in many sections of 
the South a Lutheran is at once a “rare bird” and 
a “fish out of water.” As for a Lutheran church, 
that is rarer still, for the churches exist mostly in 
spots or groups, here, there and yonder, with long 
distances between. For example, if you draw a line 
375 miles long through Middle Tennessee, east to 
west, from the Blue Ridge to the Mississippi, and then 
from each end draw a line 425 miles south to the 
Gulf of Mexico, you will inclose a Lutheran desert 
in which the United Lutheran Church is not repre- 
sented by a single church or mission. At the upper 
end stands the mission church at Chattanooga, Ten- 
nessee, and at the lower end stands the mission church 
at Birmingham, Alabama, but between these two out- 
posts, in a territory which contains the Muscle Shoals 
property, the fertile valleys of the Tennessee and Mis- 
sissippi Rivers and the port of New Orleans (the sec- 
ond largest in America) with its population of nearly 
400,000, the United Lutheran Church is simply not 
onthe map. We have not a single church in the whole 
State of Louisiana, none in western Georgia, one in 
western Florida, two in Alabama, two in southern 
Tennessee, and fourteen small congregations with less 
than 400 communicant members in Mississippi. 


ITS FIELDS AT 


But the need to plant home missions in the South 
is more than spatial: it is also personal and, so to say, 
numerical. The entire South has a population of 
about 36,000,000, of whom only 14,000,000 are in the 
churches. Of the population of the South 9,000,000 
are negroes, of whom but 4,000,000 are members of 
the Church. As was said, this district is unlike the 
three other districts, in that it has not received a tide 
of immigration, and it, therefore, represents the most 
distinctively American section of both our Church and 
country. In the absence of peoples of Lutheran ante- 
cedents, it may be called virgin soil in which to plant 
the evangelical truth as held and taught by us. It 
offers the opportunity for real Home Mission work. “It 
opens the possibility not only of gathering in and con- 
Serving the scattered members of our own household 
of faith, but of propagating the faith of the house- 
hold. It presents the privilege of saving through our 
faith and of adding to our household people who have 
no faith and do not belong to any household.” It 
affords our Church the occasion of approving itself 
as a true Church of Christ. As Dr. H. E. Jacobs has 
truly said, “The Lutheran Church in America has more 
to do than merely to care for the descendants of 
former Lutherans. By placing such limitations upon 
its responsibilities it forfeits its character as a 
Church.” At the same time, in the new industria] 
South many of our people are leaving the farms and 
villages and are flocking to the cities and manufactur- 
ing centers. One who knows whereof he speaks 
declares that in every city of the South having a popu- 
lation of 10,000, there are enough Lutherans to justify 


48 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


a mission, and that there yet remain in the Southern 
District, unoccupied, 39 such cities of 10,000 and up- 
wards of population. Progress, it is true, is being 
made, but at a rate which falls far short of the urgency 
of the need. When the present Board of Home Mis- 
sions and Church Extension took over the work in 
1919, there were in the Southern District 42 missions. 
This number has been increased to 77, and meanwhile 
21 have become self-sustaining. But not 77 but sev- 
enty times seven would scarcely be an exaggeration 
if all the demands were to be met—from Maryland 
down to Florida and from Florida over to and into 
Texas. 

There are several features peculiar to this Southern 
District which call for special remark and emphasis. 
One is the evangelizing of the 5,000,000 unchurched 
negroes. The Missouri Synod and the Joint Synod of 
Ohio are conducting work among them and with a 
measure of success. Our United Lutheran Church 
has done nothing definite as yet, but steps are being 
taken which will doubtless lead to a beginning of the 
work. We cannot ignore the call to evangelize the 
negro any more than we can fail to take the Gospel 
to the native of Africa or the Islands of the Sea. 
“Until we begin to do mission work among the ne- 
groes,” said one of our ministers, himself a home mis- 
sionary and a Southerner to the core, “our Home 
Mission work will not be an unqualified success. The 
negroes have need of the Gospel. The Lutheran 
Church has the Gospel in the purest and _ simplest 
form. We have an obligation to teach this Gospel 
to the negroes and we cannot hope for God’s richest 


ITS FIELDS 49 


and fullest blessing upon our work until we obey 
Him and teach it to them.” 

A second feature is the presence in this field of 
the mountain people who are needy in every way. The 
mountains—the Appalachian Range—extend parallel 
with the Atlantic Coast from Pennsylvania to Georgia, 
a distance of 500 miles and branch out in places 300 
miles in width. The population of this section is given 
as upwards of 5,000,000, of which 88 per cent. is 
white. They are of good old American stock, descend- 
ants of original settlers and pioneers, but many of 
them, because of isolation and poverty of the soil, 
have become ‘“‘poor” in every sense of the word. Many 
of them are Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, 
and those churches are doing religious and educational 
work among them, but there are perhaps a million of 
these cabin people who are living in real neglect. 
Into this Home Mission field the United Lutheran 
Church, as such, has not yet entered. But the Inner 
Mission Board, in co-operation with the Women’s Mis- 
sionary Society, has made a beginning of work of 
this character by establishing a day school in Currin 
Valley, near Marion, Virginia, and plans have been 
made for a school near Konnarock, Virginia, the 
Women’s Missionary Society providing funds for the 
erection of the building and the maintenance of the 
school. A successful work is also being done in Wa- 
tauga County, North Carolina, the woman worker 
being supported by the same Society. This is genuine 
Home Mission work, and it is hoped that it is but the 
beginning of an important new enterprise of the 
United Lutheran Church. 


50 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


The third feature is the presence in this field of com- 
munities of “mill people.” The greatest industrial 
establishments in the South are those given to the 
manufacture of cotton goods. The employees of these 
textile mills live in villages adjacent to the manufac- 
turing plants. The villages are owned and maintained 
by the owners and operators of the mills. The oper- 
atives offer one of the greatest fields for Home Mis- 
sions anywhere in the land. The villages and mill 
communities are found chiefly in North Carolina, 
South Carolina and Georgia. Many mill operatives 
are ignorant both of letters and religion. A noble 
Lutheran minister who labored successfully in such 
a village once declared: “The children of these 
people are as ignorant of the simplest religious truth 
as any heathen could be.” But their very destitution 
constitutes a loud call to the Church—a twofold call, 
for evangelization and for education. With the will- 
ing assistance of the mill Owners, community centers 
are established in which Christian teachers teach and 
train all who apply for instruction. Not seldom a lot 
for a church is donated and other financial aid is 
given. A beginning has been made by our Church in 
this kind of Home Mission work with gratifying re- 
sults. No greater call comes to it and to us to care 
for our own and for others otherwise unprovided for, 
than the call of the mill villages of the South. 

Still a fourth feature is the presence on this field 
of two States which call for special mention. One is 
the great State of Florida—egreat in size, about 150 
miles wide and 500 miles long ; great in growth, its 
crops in twenty years having increased in value 280 


ITS FIELDS 51 


per cent. and its bank deposits from $10,000,000 to 
$187,000,000. Its trucking and citrous industries are 
immense. As for oranges, it is declared that if all 
the oranges raised in a single year in Florida were 
put in box cars, the engine of such a freight train 
would be in Philadelphia and the caboose would still 
be in Jacksonville, and this train would bring five 
times as much money as the United States paid Spain 
for the whole State in 1820. Now, the growing and 
handling of all these crops and products, with the 
business pertaining thereto, means necessarily a cor- 
responding increase in population. That is the fact. 
The 60,000 Floridians in 1820 have become 1,000,000 
in 1924. They have come from all the States in the 
Union—many of them from New York, Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, where the 
Lutheran Church is strong. And still they come, busi- 
ness men and women in the cities, farmers and plant- 
ers on the land, winter tourists by the thousands, at- 
tracted by the climate and the country, but all of them, 
whether colonists or transients, in need of the spirit- 
ual ministrations of the Church. To meet this need 
our United Lutheran Church has thus far established 
but five mission churches. The youngest mission con- 
gregation was organized in the oldest city in the 
United States, in St. Augustine, in December, 1924, 
with about twenty charter members. Other places 
are asking for services and churches. The need is 
pressing. If we delay, others will take our people— 
and our crown. Meanwhile, of its million of popu- 
lation, barely 325,000 are in the churches, leaving over 
600,000 unchurched. 


52 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


The other great State on this field calling for special 
remark is the State of Texas. A better name for it 
than “The Lone Star State” is “The Empire State 
of the South.” It is the biggest State in the Union. 
The land area covers 263,398 square miles. It is twice 
as large as all the New England States, plus Virginia, 
South Carolina, New Jersey and Delaware. One can 
travel 24 hours in the State on a fast train in a more 
or less straight line without crossing its vast stretch 
of territory. It is unrivaled in area, in diversity of 
climate and crops—from the corn and grain of north- 
ern Texas to the cotton and citrous fruits of southern 
Texas—and in undeveloped resources, such as its pro- 
duction of oil, which amounted in 1920 to over 100,- 
000,000 barrels. 

Texas has 253 counties. It has four cities with a 
population of over 100,000, six cities with 30,000 to 
80,000, and 110 cities and towns whose population 
is between 3,000 and 30,000. The total population of 
the State is 4,500,000, and it is capable of sustaining 
a population of 100,000,000. All the States of the 
Union are represented in its population and dozens of 
other nationalities. There are 31,000 Germans, 13,000 
Slovaks and 4,500 Swedes in the State—abundant 
Lutheran material. Then there are thousands of 
children of the second generation who are rapidly 
undergoing Americanization, whose language is the 
English and whose preference and demand are for the 
church service in English. Thus there is need, especi- 
ally in the cities and in their neighborhood, for Eng- 
lish Home Mission work. This need is more clearly 
realized when it is known that there are 180,000 un- 


ITS FIELDS 53 


churched Lutherans in the State and only 40,000 con- 
firmed Lutherans enrolled in all the Lutheran churches 
combined, that is, in the churches of the Missouri 
Synod, the Iowa Synod, the Joint Synod of Ohio, and 
the Texas Synod. 

Reference has already been made to the Texas Sy- 
nod of the United Lutheran Church in America and 
mention has been made of its praiseworthy mission- 
ary zeal. This small synod of but 15 pastors, 23 con- 
gregations and less than 3,000 communicant members, 
is laboring heroically at its missionary task, and, al- 
though its own task is German or German-English, 
the call for advance in purely English work has come 
from the Texas Synod itself. Nobody could be more 
ardent in its desire to see the many growing cities 
occupied. Thus far the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension, limited as it is as to men and 
means, has been able to plant but two missions, in 
the large and influential cities of Houston and Dallas, 
with San Antonio as the next point of attack. But 
the Home Mission problem in Texas is one of momen- 
tous importance. The race is on between the Church, 
with its Home Mission forces, and paganism, with 
its worldly and ungodly ideals. For of the 4,500,000 
of population, only 1,800,000 are in the churches, 
leaving almost 3,500,000 without the sanctions and 
restraints of religion, let alone the salvation of their 
immortal souls. To these millions of the unchurched 
the Lutheran Church also owes a duty in the Lord. 
A Baptist pastor of Houston was asked: “Ts this a 
strong Baptist community?” “Not necessarily,” was 
the reply, “but we expect to make it such.” The time 


ib 
54 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


has come when Lutherans must have more faith in 
their faith, more diligence in their work, more con- 
secration in their life. Texas will not be captured 
for Christ and His Kingdom, nor will any other region 
or population, unless and until churchmen realize 
their responsibility and appreciate their privileges and 
opportunities as disciples and stewards of their ex- 
alted Lord. 
Central District. 

This district is characterized by immense distances, 
peremptory needs, and superabundant opportunities. 
Nothing short of superlatives suffice to describe the 
situation. From a Home Mission point of view it is 
almost overwhelming. The Central District comprises 
that great tier of States, with their synods, stretching 
from Ohio on the east to Montana on the west, and 
from Oklahoma on the south across the international 
boundary to and into Canada on the north. Here 
are many of the great and greater cities of the land— 
Detroit and Grand Rapids in Michigan; Cleveland, 
Toledo, Columbus and Cincinnati in Ohio; then In- 
dianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneapolis, 
Des Moines, Omaha, St. Louis, Kansas City and Okla- 
homa City. Here, too, in the broad and fertile fields 
lying between the Ohio River and the Rocky Moun- 
tains, between the Arctic Circle and the Rio Grande, 
is the great granary of the world. Into this rich 
and inviting territory in the last half of the past 
century poured a wide stream of immigration, for 
the most part from the Lutheran countries of Europe ~ 
—Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Icelanders, Danes. 
To provide for their spiritual needs the Augustana 


ITS FIELDS 55 


Synod, the Missouri Synod, the Icelandic and Danish 
Synods, and the Synods of Ohio and Iowa, and last 
but not least, the Norwegian Lutheran Church, en- 
tered the field and they have done hard work and 
good work. All these Lutheran bodies have “labored, 
served and sacrificed to gather in and minister to 
their pioneer people. Their early missionary minis- 
ters have endured hardships, suffered privations and 
in many cases laid down their lives for the love of 
Christ, of His truth and of their people. The stories 
of their labors, their zeal, their heroism and martyr- 
dom would make reading more thrilling than the 
annals of the mid-west circuit riders or the exploring 
Catholic fathers.” 

But a remarkable change is taking place in that 
vast western region and one with which the Church, 
in mapping out its Home Mission program, must 
speedily reckon. The change does not consist in a 
change of faith, for Lutheranism still predominates 
in the life of that great area. In most of the cities 
named above the Lutheran Church is the strongest 
Protestant denomination and, in a number of them, 
stronger than all the others combined. In city and 
in country the people are professedly Lutheran and 
in their aggregate represent a majoriy of all the 
Lutherans in the United States. This is the Lutheran 
territory of North America. The change itself which 
is taking place is twofold. One feature of it is the 
movement of the population to the cities. Westward 
the course of another empire is taking its way—the 
Empire of Industry—and this means an exodus from 
the open country to the cities and towns. In 1910 


56 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


almost 75 per cent. of the population of the Central 
States were found in the country. In 1920, ten years 
later, such was the movement cityward that the rural 
and urban population was equally divided. The other 
feature of the change is not less remarkable than 
natural. It is the Anglicizing or Americanizing of 
the children of the original immigrants. Many thou- 
sands of young Lutherans are leaving the rural com- 
munities and their home church, in which the service 
was (and is) conducted in a foreign tongue and are 
domiciling themselves in the cities. These enterpris- 
ing sons and daughters of the sturdy Lutheran races 
must have the Gospel in the language which they can 
understand or they will be lost to their Mother Church 
and the very truth of the evangel which she proclaims 
will be lost to them—indeed, such deplorable loss has 
already been sustained in the case of hosts of our 
young people. Ours has been a country Church; now 
it must meet the challenge of the city. Here is the 
pressing, peremptory need. If the Church fails to 
meet it, Lutheranism will certainly fail to dominate 
the life of the Middle West. Only an aggressive mis- 
Slonary policy will serve to satisfy the need and solve 
the problem. And this must be forthcoming mainly 
from the United Lutheran Church and its Board of 
Home Missions, which is doing, or ought to be doing, 
the English work in this district. Other Lutheran 
synods are laboring in their own fields, and the respon- 
sibility to shoulder its task and do its own part in the 
work rests upon the entire United Lutheran Church 
in America. To evade this responsibility will be to 
merit the bitter curse upon Meroz and upon the in- 


ITS FIELDS 57 


habitants thereof, “Because they came not to the help 
of the Lord, To the help of the Lord against the 
mighty.” 

It is true that the Board is at work in this field in 
the measure of its resources, but they fall woefully 
short of the demands in the case. Every available 
man and every available dollar could be profitably 
used by the Board in the extension of the Kingdom 
in this Central District alone. As matters stand, 116 
mission parishes are receiving aid in the sum of al- 
most $100,000. As to the Field Force: “Four of the 
synods are served by Synodical Superintendents; in 
three synods full-time Presidents supervise mission 
work. Eleven Field Missionaries are exploring new 
fields and doing pioneer work for the Church. More 
than 100 missionaries with intense zeal and true con- 
secration are carrying the standards of the Church to 
new battle-fronts. The percentage of increase in the 
confirmed membership of this territory averages 24.5 
per cent.—an eloquent testimony to the missionary 
Spirit of our mission pastors.” In truth, the zealous 
and self-sacrificing missionaries and the active co- 
operating synods are worthy of all praise. 

And yet only the edges of this vast field have been 
touched. There are many cities having a population 
of thousands of people without English Lutheran serv- 
ices. Michigan alone has a Lutheran population of 
630,000 people and a confirmed membership of but 
123,000. The Northern Peninsula of Michigan, with 
a score of cities having a population ranging from 
5,000 to 15,000, is an unknown land to the United 
Lutheran Church. In the great State of Montana two 


58 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


lone missionaries of our Church are holding the field 
and eagerly awaiting reinforcements. Oklahoma, with 
its rapidly growing cities, has but two English United 
Lutheran churches. One-half of the Lutherans in 
the Northwest are unchurched. Here the sects are 
busiest and the most successful in proselyting. In 47 
of the 102 counties of Illinois, in which are included 
five cities of over 20,000 each, there is no United Luth- 
eran Church. The State of Missouri, with 115 counties, 
has no United Lutheran church in 106 of these, although 
in all this territory is to be found a large percentage 
of people of Lutheran ancestry—Germans, Scandina- 
vians and native-born Americans. In the great in- 
dustrial centers, in the neglected rural communities, 
in the lumber camps of the North and the irrigation 
farms of the West, the unchurched multitudes present 
an opportunity which comes as a challenge to test the 
faith and courage of the Lutheran Church of America. 

Truly it is a field of urgent need. A field mission- 
ary reports a territory of 100 square miles without a 
single church of any kind. It is true, this territory 
is sparsely settled, but the Government has thought 
it worth while to erect a school building every four 
miles. Should the Church do less for the souls of 
these scattered pioneers? In Northern Minnesota 
there is a section 60 miles square without a Christian 
church. There had not been seen a preacher or priest 
on the territory in ten years. A Christian teacher 
found 30 unbaptized children in her school, of course 
entirely ignorant of the Bible. And the field is not 
only needy, it is ripe for the reaper. In a single city, 
Lincoln, Nebraska, in six weeks a parish worker, a 


ITS FIELDS 59 


pastor not being available, gathered 155 children into 
a Sunday school. The fields are white unto harvest, 
but the laborers are few. 


Western District. 


This is a field of prodigious proportions. It is a 
vast territory with abundant opportunities for ex- 
tended Home Mission operations. The Western Dis- 
trict comprises the California, Pacific and Rocky 
Mountain Synods and its field includes ten States of 
the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast Region, to- 
gether with British Columbia and Alaska on the north 
and El Paso, Texas, on the south, the whole covering 
in round numbers, 2,000,000 square miles, with a 
population of over 10,000,000. This territory repre- 
sents more than one-third the area of the United 
States. It takes the District Superintendent three 
days and three nights to travel the length of his ter- 
ritory (without considering Alaska) and two days 
and two nights to travel the breadth thereof. He must 
travel two days in going from one synod to the next 
nearest synod. When the Rocky Mountain Synod re- 
cently met in Denver, Colorado, the pastor and lay 
delegate from the church in El Paso, Texas, were pres- 
ent, having traveled a distance of 784 miles. A mis- 
sionary superintendent for six months cared for the 
mission in Caspar, Wyoming, and at the same time 
was endeavoring to revive the work in Gypsum, Color- 
ado, 678 miles away. These figures will give some 
idea of the distances to be traversed as well as of one 
of the difficulties encountered in carrying on the work. 


60 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Of the synods forming this district two are on the 
coast and one is in the mountains, and each is separ- 
ated from the other, as was said, by a couple of days 
of travel, and that through territory which our Church 
has not yet entered and which in many places is ripe 
to the harvest—wide gaps which need to be bridged. 
On the north is the Pacific Synod, which operates in 
Washington and Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. 
Washington has 400,000 Lutherans out of a popula- 
tion of over a million. Among these the United Luth- 
eran Church has eleven churches. In this State is 
Seattle and in Seattle is the Pacific Theological Semi- 
nary, a veritable godsend to this district, for in this 
institution are prepared native sons for the Gospel 
ministry, who minister in their own land to their own 
people. In Oregon there are seven congregations. In 
far Northwestern British Columbia a substantial con- 
gregation has been organized at Prince Rupert. The 
great prairie provinces of the Canadian West, with 
their fertile fields and swiftly growing cities, are 
attracting rapidly increasing numbers of Lutheran 
settlers, who are calling for Lutheran missionaries 
and pastors. In Alaska the first mission stake has been 
driven at Juneau, a town of 5,000, with over half of 
the Protestant population Lutheran. At another place 
sixty have signed a petition for an English Lutheran 
congregation and call for a pastor. Other towns vis- 
ited have been found ready for Lutheran occupancy. 

Coming south, the California Synod is found to be 
bi-focal, having two centers, one in the San Francisco 
Bay region, the other in Los Angeles (it is 1,300 miles 
from Los Angeles to Seattle, as far as from Wash- 












ST. JOHN’S, OSHKOSH 
WIS. 





ete? 


REFORMATION, MILWAUKEE, WIS. 


SAAN ath ih m1 Sa 


MOTHER CHURCH IN WISCONSIN 
Wisconsin Fruitage of Missionary Enterprise 











ST. JOHN’S, RICHMOND HILL, N. Y. 
Fruit of New York State Mission Work 





ITS FIELDS 61 


ington, D. C., to Omaha, Neb.). The synodical ter- 
ritory embraces the States of California and Arizona. 
California alone has an area of 155,000 square miles, 
nearly as large as the whole of New England with the 
States of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania 
added. The population of the territory of the Cali- 
fornia Synod is 3,700,000, of whom 2,180,000 are not 
connected with any church and are not directly under 
Christian influence. The demand for the evangeliza- 
tion of this imperial State, with its 750 miles of coast 
line facing the pagan Orient, has never been more 
urgent, nor the opportunity more favorable. 

On the Eastern Slope of the Great Divide the young, 
vigorous but numerically small Rocky Mountain Synod 
plans eagerly to occupy a great territory of promise 
and importance to future American Lutheranism. 
This synod lists 14 pastors, 18 congregations and 1900 
confirmed members. The congregations are strung 
along a line of 1,100 miles in length, as far as from 
New York City to Florida, and are to be found in the 
States of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyom- 
ing. In short, the Rocky Mountain Synod is a “hair- 
line” stretching almost the entire width (north and 
south) of the United States, making the work doubly 
difficult and rendering impossible that stimulus of 
contact and conference, leading to co-operation, found 
between the churches and pastors of more compact 
bodies. 

It remains to be said that these three synods, two 
of which were organized in 1891 and the other in 1901, 
present a total of 82 congregations and that every one 
of these, with the exception of two, has been the direct 


62 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


result of Home Mission endeavor, out of which have 
come in the thirty-three years, thirty self-supporting 
congregations, while fifty-two are still on the funds 
of the Board. Thus this work is almost wholly the 
fruitage of Home Mission enterprise, and it presents 
strong testimony to the vital importance of that cause 
and of its exceeding great value not only in extend- 
ing the borders of the Church but also in promoting 
its greater efficiency in prosecuting its sacred task. 

At present six Field Missionaries and fifty-one Pas- 
tors are conducting the work of the United Lutheran 
Church in this district, under the direction of the three 
Synodical Boards and the District Superintendent. It 
is an immense field and it presents peculiar difficulties, 
such as the migratory character of the population and 
its addiction to materialism, to pleasure and to all the 
fads and isms which afflict mankind. But, given the 
men and the means, God’s sure promise will be ful- 
filled and these difficulties will be overcome. Mean- 
while the need is urgent and great. In Arizona we 
have but one congregation and but one in New Mexico, 
while there is not even one in Idaho, Nevada or Utah, 
and Wyoming has but two. In this district there are 
thirty-one cities of 10,000 population and upwards, 
which have no English Lutheran church; and it has 
been estimated that the entire Lutheran force at work 
in this field has not gotten into its congregations 
more than about 6 per cent. of the Lutheran material. 
Yet the field lies ready and ripe to the hand of the 
reaper. The opportunity is present and abundant, 
as witness the recent experience of a field missionary 
who in 500 consecutive calls found fifty Lutheran 


ITS FIELDS 63 


families. The call upon the whole Church is, “Let us 
go up and possess the land, for we are well able.” 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


. What is the territorial extent of our Home Mission field? 

2. What is its population? 

3. How is the work of Home Missions allied with the cause of 
patriotism? 

4, Name the five Home Mission Boards of the United Lutheran 
Church? . 

5. Into what four districts is the field of the Board of Home 

Missions and Church Extension divided? 

. Discuss the Eastern District—its field and its need. 

. Discuss the Southern District—its field and its need. 

. Discuss the Central District—its field and its need. 

. Discuss the Western District—its field and its need. 


— 


© Oo ~1 5 


CHAPTER IV. 
ITS FIELDS. 
(CONCLUDED) 


The preceding chapter dealt with the Board of 
Home Missions and Church Extension and the four 
districts into which that field is divided. This chapter 
sets forth the work of the Board of Northwestern 
Missions, the Immigrants Mission Board, the West 
Indies Mission Board, and the Committee on Jewish 
Missions. All of these Boards might be considered 
under the head of the “Forces” of the Home Mission 
Enterprise, but it is found convenient to consider them 
under the aspect of the fields in which their work is 
done. 

Board of Northwestern Missions. 

This Board is entrusted with the care and develop- 
ment of the German and German-English missions 
of the United Lutheran Church. Its mission field is 
simply immense. It includes parts of the Canada Sy- 
nod in Ontario and Quebec; the Manitoba Synod in 
the Canadian Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, 
Alberta and British Columbia, and the State of North 
Dakota; the Pacific Synod in the States of Washing- 
ton and Oregon; the Wartburg Synod in the States 
of Illinois (chiefly Chicago) and Iowa; the German 
Nebraska Synod in the States of Nebraska, South 
Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and 

64 


ITS FIELDS 65 


northern Texas, and the Texas Synod in the southern 
and southwestern parts of that State. On this vast 
territory are laboring the General Secretary, three 
Synodical Superintendents and 62 missionary pastors. 
They are in charge of 108 mission congregations, not 
counting ten or twelve preaching places. Altogether 
these missions are found in six Canadian Provinces 
and fourteen States of the Union (for to the above 
list should be added the States of Wisconsin and 
Michigan)—an enormous mission field indeed. 
Special attention is called to the immensity of this 
field. A traveler takes a train on the Grand Trunk 
Pacific Railroad at Ottawa, Ontario, on the east, and 
he travels fully three days, 1,800 miles, before he 
traverses British Columbia on the west. Or, going 
from south to north, he travels 2,500 miles from Los 
Angeles, California, to Juneau, Alaska—more than 
twice the distance in length and breadth of the “‘hair- 
line’ Rocky Mountain Synod. In the performance of 
his duties the General Secretary, between the biennial 
conventions of the United Lutheran Church, travels 
an average of about 30,000 miles—quite around the 
earth and a fifth part of the next trip around. The 
Provinces of Saskatchewan (an Indian name mean- 
ing, “Rapid River”) and Alberta, are each nearly as 
large as the State of Texas, and with Manitoba cover 
an area of 800,000 square miles, four times the size 
of France. These are the Prairie Provinces on whose 
fertile fields and farms and in whose growing towns 
are settled about 2,000,000 people, an average of only 
2.5 inhabitants to the square mile. From all of which 
it will be readily seen that the task of the missionary 


66 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


in Canada is not an easy one. The shepherd must go 
far to find and tend his scattered sheep where the 
settlements are so few and far-between, and even the 
individual homesteads are far separated one from 
another. 

We are speaking now of Canada and especially of 
the three great Provinces in which are found the vast 
wheat fields of America. Here lies Canada’s greatest 
future and that future has a special interest for our 
American Lutheran Church, for at least one-fifth of 
the population in that section is of Lutheran extrac- 
tion. Its most thrifty and industrious people are of 
German and Scandinavian origin. It is they—Swedes, 
Norwegians, Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Letts, Lithu- 
anians—who have transformed the great prairies into 
fields of waving grain. It is true that many of these, 
sad to say, left their religion at home when they emi- 
grated and many have fallen prey to proselyting sects 
and sectlets and many have preferred the choicest 
homestead lands to nearness to a church of their own 
faith and their spiritual kindred and have become 
indifferent and cold. At all events, in a recent census 
of the nearly 2,000,000 inhabitants of these Provinces, 
not more than 200,000 or one-tenth, professed them- 
selves to be Lutherans. Moreover, in Saskatchewan 
alone, less than 15,000, or about 16 per cent. of the 
90,000 of population have any connection with the 
church to which they profess allegiance; and, pre- 
sumably, conditions are the same in the two other 
Provinces. Surely these facts and figures show the 
urgent need of more intensive and extensive Home 
Mission work in Canada’s Prairie Provinces than the 


ITS FIELDS 67 


Board of Northwestern Missions has as yet, because 
of the lack of men and means, been able to do. 

And the need grows greater and more urgent day by 
day by reason of the large additions being made to 
the Lutheran material already at hand. The Cana- 
dian Government is inviting immigration, especially 
from German and Scandinavian lands, offering the 
immigrants homesteads and a certain acreage of land 
as well as giving them financial assistance for the 
procuring of livestock, farm implements, seeds, ete. 
This civil and social effort of the Government must be 
supplemented by the Church and especially by our 
own Church. It must send to these immigrants mis- 
sionaries in their own tongue and thus shepherd and 
feed them, for otherwise they are shepherdless and 
exposed to the ravages of the wolf. Indeed, a Luth- 
eran Immigrants’ Board has been formed by the Luth- 
eran Synods working on this territory and its efforts 
have been not without result. By August of 1924 a 
thousand immigrants had arrived under its auspices 
and their quality is reported as being especially good. 
Some of the churches have already greatly benefitted 
by accessions from this source. For example, a strug- 
gling mission in the Manitoba Synod has doubled in 
size since eighty-one of these immigrants have moved 
within its bounds. These strangers are met at the 
ports of entry and are grateful for the assistance re- 
ceived. Funds are being applied by the United Luth- 
eran Church for the work at the ports, and the 
Women’s Missionary Society has appropriated for the 
purpose $2,000 this year (1924). In our own coun- 
try the restrictive immigration laws limit German 


68 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


immigration to 51,000 a year; the Dominion of Can- 
ada has no restrictions but encourages immigration, 
with a preference for Germans, as was said. From 
July to December of 1924, it is estimated that there 
were 100,000 arrivals from Germany, Russia, Austria, 
and other lands where German is spoken. 

Of course, as long as the restrictive immigration 
laws are in force in this country, the Board’s field of 
labor in respect of new material is likewise restricted, 
but many opportunities to start new work present 
themselves. These are found in the big cities and in 
rural sections where bi-lingual work is desirable and 
necessary to secure the best results, as well as to ex- 
tend and expand the work in centers in which work 
has been begun, but where there stil] exist both field 
and need, as in Chicago, where there are over 400,000 
Germans, a half of whom are Lutherans and not a 
half of the half are in the Church. Another field of 
great promise which needs to be developed (and which 
Henry Ford in a materia] way is developing) is the 
Iron Ridge territory in northern Michigan, where at 
present two parishes are being served by missionaries 
with marked success. In these mining, milling and 
lumber towns are found many Lutheran people who 
must be gathered into the Church. Moreover, great 
opportunities are awaiting the Board in Mexico. Al- 
ready before 1922 an urgent call came to the Board 
to begin work in this Republic where there were at 
that time 20,000 Germans and German-Americans 
without a church and without the ministrations of a 
pastor. From lack of men and funds the Board was 
obliged to turn a deaf ear to the call. But now Mexico 


ITS FIELDS 69 


also is making strong efforts to attract German-speak- 
ing immigrants, especially from Russia, where they 
are oppressed, and to settle them in the agricultural 
districts. If these efforts are successful, the United 
Lutheran Church will have a second chance to begin 
mission work in our neighboring Republic on the 
south. 

The scope of the work of this Board is thus seen 
to be practically unlimited. Besides the vast field 
already indicated, it can, on request, take over the 
German mission work of any synod in connection with 
the United Lutheran Church in America, provided 
permission is given by the General Body. In this 
Board the Church has just the machinery it needs for 
this work; through its efforts great things have been 
accomplished, and that in the face of conditions and 
obstacles which seemed at times almost insurmount- 
able. The distances to be traversed, the poverty of 
an immigrant people and their distribution over large 
and sparsely settled areas, the insufficiency of men 
and means, combined to form a handicap which only 
unfaltering faith and determined resolution were able 
to overcome. All honor to the faithful, self-sacrificing 
missionaries, who have endured not only the “heat” 
but also the cold and toil of the day!—men “who 
travel through trackless forests and over sandy plains, 
afoot, on horseback, in ox carts and rattling, back- 
firing Fords in summer, and on snowshoes, in sleighs 
and what not in the winter when the thermometer 
drops to 30-40-50 below zero; who live with a family 
probably of six or seven children in log houses and 
small dwellings where perhaps the only running water 


70 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


they have is that which comes through the shingles 
on the roof.” The story of the German work under 
the Board of Northwestern Missions is a chapter of 
thrilling sacrifices of devoted men, laboring amid hard- 
ships not equaled in the days of Muhlenberg and in 
the pioneer days of the West. Noble men and women 
—for the wives and children share in the hardships 
and in so far contribute to the prosecution of the 
work—laboring under conditions which shame those 
who sit at ease in Zion, or at least deserve their sym- 
pathy and prayers and more generous support. And 
the average salary of these heroic men was for long 
$600 per annum; then was raised to $800, and is now 
but $900 in these days of high prices, a pittance on 
which a man and his family may be able to exist but 
cannot be said to live. 

The greatest difficulty in the German Home Mission 
work has always been the lack of missionaries who 
were able to preach in the German language and will- 
ing to labor under the peculiar hardships of pioneer 
life and for the absurdly small salaries that could be 
paid. The great majority of missionaries came, like 
the people they serve, from the old country, especially 
from the Seminaries at Kropp and Breklum. A hun- 
dred and fifteen missionaries in four of the missionary 
synods (Canada, Manitoba, Nebraska, Wartburg) 
were educated in these two institutions. But as these 
schools could not fully supply the needs, and as the 
necessity for a native ministry became more pressing 
on account of the transition from the German lan- 
guage to the English, three seminaries were founded 
on different parts of the mission field about the year 


ITS FIELDS 71 


1913: Waterloo Seminary, Saskatoon Seminary, and 
Martin Luther Seminary at Lincoln, Nebraska, where 
ministers are trained for the German and bi-lingual 
work of our Church. The Saskatoon Seminary re- 
ceived from its begining and still receives a very large 
share of its support from the treasury of the Board, 
and in the Martin Luther Seminary financial assist- 
ance is given to individual students. Saskatoon Col- 
lege and Seminary has attained an enrollment of 47, 
the largest number of students since the institution 
was founded. It is devoutly hoped that with the help 
of the now consolidated Breklum-Kropp School and 
these seminaries in our own country, a sufficient num- 
ber of ministers for the work of the future can be 
secured. 
Immigrants Mission Board. 

The history of the United States is largely a history 
of immigration. Indeed, the only native original 
Americans are the Indians. All others have emigrated 
from other lands in times recent or remote. America 
has been called the world’s “Melting-pot,” in which 
are fused newcomers from almost all the nations of 
the world. These millions of immigrants present more 
than a social, a political, an economic problem; they 
present also a spiritual problem, and it is this problem 
which is a challenge to the Christian Church. It is 
true that many of these immigrants have not left their 
religion in the homeland but are hungry for the means 
of grace. But it is also true that very many have 
broken off from all association with the customs of 
their native land, including the religious habits and 
influences. In this new, strange land of their adop- 


72 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


tion they are making a new start in life, but they are 
too often strangers to what was most dear to them at 
home—the Church of their fathers. They are bent on 
getting on in life, not on getting wp. These need all 
the more to be sought out and re-awakened to a sense 
of their deepest need. 

Moreover, this problem of the immigrant popula- 
tion has also become a patriotic one. The immigrants 
of colonial times came mostly from England and Scot- 
land, with some additional small groups of Germans, 
Swedes and Hollanders. It was therefore an Anglo- 
Saxon element, with the same ideas and ideals and ra- 
cial traits. The second period of immigration to the 
United States began about 1820 and lasted until about 
1880. This immigration consisted for the most part (to 
the number of about 10,000,000) of-Irish, German and 
Scandinavian elements—God-fearing, sober, indus- 
trious people, who helped largely in the development of 
our land and the strengthening of our nation. The third 
period, however, marks a notable change. Since 1880 
the tide of immigration not only swelled to a total of 
upwards of 20,000,000, but its sources are to be found 
not in northern and western Europe but in central, 
southern and eastern Europe. The Celtic and Ger- 
manic peoples are replaced by the Slavic, Italian and 
Semitic races, quite different in character and educa- 
tion, in custom and temperament, from the Teuton 
immigration of Germanic and Scandinavian countries. 
Their social and political antecedents are quite the 
opposite of American, and readjustment is needed in 
principles and practices before they can be assimilated 
into the body of the nation and prove a source of 


ITS FIELDS 73 


strength; otherwise they will become a source of weak- 
ness and even constitute a menace. Of these immi- 
grant hosts, millions have come from Roman Catholic 
or Greek Catholic or Hebrew lands or environment, 
but other millions have come from Lutheran lands or 
from lands in which the Lutheran Church is strongly 
entrenched; and it becomes the bounden duty and also 
the welcome privilege of the Lutheran Church in 
America to provide for the spiritual life of these for- 
eign brethren from across the seas, as well as to bring 
the saving Gospel to those who know not the Lord 
or know Him not in truth. Thus the spiritual and the 
patriotic problem becomes almost one. It is that of 
Christianizing and Americanizing these many immi- 
grant millions, of making and keeping them Chris- 
tians and citizens. Christian Americans make our 
best citizens. It is they who render to Government 
the things which belong to Government, and to God the 
things which belong to God. To evangelize them and 
bring them into the Church of God is to do a work 
both for God’s Kingdom and our country. For their 
sakes, for our sakes, for the Church’s sake, for the 
nation’s sake and for Christ’s sake, the Christian 
Church must earnestly apply herself to the task of 
teaching them Christian truth and of shepherding 
them as they establish their homes throughout the 
land. It is a complicated and difficult task, but the 
Church dare not shrink from assuming and perform- 
ing it. 

In this tremendously important task of the entire 
Christian Church of America our United Lutheran 
Church has a share, which it seeks to accomplish 


74 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


mainly through its Immigrants Mission Board, whose 
function has been defined to be: “To carry on, super- 
intend and promote the work of Home Missions among 
foreign-born people and their descendants, and to 
make of these people good, loyal citizens under the 
government and institutions of the land in which they 
now enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 
The administration of the work of the Board among 
immigrants is divided into three departments—Slav 
and Hungarian, Italian, Finnish—each under the di- 
rection of a Superintendent. For the Board soon 
found it necessary to departmentalize its work be- 
cause of the vastness and diversity of its field of labor. 
This field comprises the Slovaks, who number at least 
400,000, from 15 to 20 per cent. being Lutheran; the 
Hungarians, who number at least 750,000, of whom 
3 per cent. are Lutheran; the Letts number some 
50,000 in the United States and 5,000 in Canada and 
are mainly Lutheran; the Italians number 5,000,000, 
60 per cent. of whom are nominally Roman Catholic 
(they are classified as 22 per cent. loyal Roman Cath- 
olics, 14 per cent. unbelievers and socialists, antago- 
nistic to the Church, and a possible 4 per cent. Protes- 
tants) ; the Finns, of whom there are from 350,000 
to 400,000, of whom 99 per cent. are Lutheran; and 
Several smaller groups, each numbering less than 
50,000. 

Slav and Hungarian Department. As has been 
stated, with the advent of the new immigration, some- 
times referred to as the “Slav invasion,” a different 
class of foreigners arrives on the scene, different from 
the older Anglo-Saxon immigrants who proceeded to 


ITS FIELDS 75 


the broad and fertile plains of the West and North- 
west and became tillers of the soil. The newer immi- 
grants have located largely in mining and industrial 
centers, and during the unprecedented industrial de- 
velopment which prevailed during the last quarter of 
the nineteenth century and the opening decade of the 
twentieth century, until the outbreak of the World 
War, there flowed from the congested areas of cen- 
tral, southern and eastern Europe an increasing stream 
of emigrant people which poured itself into our min- 
ing districts and manufacturing cities and towns. 
When the catastrophe of the World War halted the 
procession, 15,000,000 immigrants had arrived in 
America since the first year of the present century. 
Of the total immigration in 1918, 87 per cent. came 
from southern and eastern Europe. Statistics show 
that there are 17,500,000 foreign-born in our land. 
Only about 7,000,000 of these are citizens. We have 
no figures to show how many of these are Christian 
and connected with the Church. 

For some time after the flood-tide of recent immi- 
gration was flowing into America, our Church was 
uninformed of the distressing spiritual condition of 
Lutheran immigrants. In 1904, however, the Minis- 
terium of Pennsylvania took cognizance of it and in 
1905 commissioned Rev. A. L. Ramer to visit Hun- 
gary, present the situation to the home authorities 
and enlist their co-operation in sending pastors to 
America. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of 
ministers in the Hungarian homeland and none could 
be spared. In that same year the General Council re- 
cognized the national scope of the mission problem 


76 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


thus presented and assumed the responsibility for its 
administration. The Home Mission Board courage- 
ously faced the situation and commissioned the pres- 
ent Superintendent, Dr. A. L. Ramer, to go to Hun- 
gary and learn the Slovak language so that on his 
return he might be able to minister to the Slovaks 
in America in a satisfactory manner. After a sojourn 
of two years in Hungary, on his return to America in 
1908, the real Home Mission work among the Slav 
and Hungarian group of foreigners began. 

The Slovak group received first attention together 
with the Siebenburger-Saxons from Transylvania (on 
December 21, 1924, the first Siebenburger-Saxon 
Church in America was dedicated in Cleveland, Ohio). 
There is a large constituency among the Slovak and 
Hungarian people. The Windish, residing in the 
western section of Hungary, also are Lutheran. The 
Lettish people from the Baltic regions are largely 
Lutheran. From the same sections a relatively small 
number of Lithuanians have come to America. To 
locate these various groups of nationals was part of 
the task of the Superintendent of this department. In 
this work of canvassing the field he visited every State 
in the Union except Maine and New Hampshire. The 
number of groups and congregations constantly in- 
creased, and that at a rate far in excess of the avail- 
able supply of pastors. It became necessary for the 
Superintendent to arrange an itinerary among these 
congregations and serve them as frequently as cir- 
cumstances permitted. This service was less frequent 
because of the immense extent of the territory to be 
covered, reaching from ocean to ocean along the north- 








OAKLAND, CAL. 





EVERETT, WASH. 





REDEEMER, LIVINGSTON, MONT. 
Western Missions 





ST. PAUL’S, TORONTO, CANADA 





ALL SAINTS, BALTIMORE, MD. 


Sample Mission Plants 


rae 


a & 


ITS FIELDS 77 


ern part of the United States, with missions in sixteen 
States. For the last thirteen years this territory has 
been visited annually by the Superintendent of this 
department, and no congregation has been without 
the ministration of the Holy Communion at least once 
a year. 

To prepare a ministry to supply the foreign-speak- 
ing peoples became a very serious problem from the 
outstart of the work. The young men who presented 
themselves either knew no English and first had to 
learn it before receiving further instruction or they 
did know the English but were not proficient in their 
mother tongue which they were obliged to use in 
serving their congregations. However, this difficulty 
has been measurably overcome. In the Slav-Hun- 
-garian Department fifty-five students have been aided 
in their preparation for the ministry, of whom twen- 
ty-five candidates have been ordained and are at work 
on the field. At present there are sixteen Slovak 
mission congregations in five States, seven Hungarian 
congregations in two States, two Windish congrega- 
tions in two States, seven Lettish congregations in 
four States and three in Canada, and there is a flour- 
ishing Assyrian mission in Philadelphia, made up of 
Lutheran Assyrian refugees who found a haven of 
shelter in America when Assyria was devastated by 
the Turks in the ravages of the World War. The Board 
was also asked to missionate among Asiatics on the 
western coast, but was obliged to refuse because of 
the lack of means. Altogether, there are sixty organ- 
ized congregations, many of which have become self- 
supporting. The Slovak group is the most thoroughly 


78 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


organized. These congregations have organized the 
Zion Slovak Synod, which now has 28 pastors, 34 con- 
gregations and 5,500 communicant members. It is 
one of the constituent synods of the United Lutheran 
Church in America. A beginning has been made to 
train young women of foreign parentage to work 
among their own racial groups. The first of these 
has finished her course at the Baltimore Motherhouse 
and has begun her service as a deaconess. Much has 
been accomplished, but the field is vast and much more 
remains to be done. The need is for larger resources 
of pastors and funds. 

Italian Department. There are 5,000,000 Italians 
in the United States and their number is increasing 
to the limit of the immigration laws. There is no city 
of any size where “Little Italy” is not to be found. In 
these Italian communities there are from 2,000 to 
75,000 sons and daughters of Sunny Italy—there are 
more than 800,000 Italians in New York City alone. 
In many of these communities the Church is not estab- 
lished. Without the Church’s administration it is 
almost impossible to cope with the agitators who sow 
the seeds of irreligion, lawlessness and discontent. The 
Church, co-operating heartily with other agencies, 
renders it possible to save the Italian and make of him 
a good Christian citizen. 

As has been said, of the 5,000,000 Italians in the 
country, 60 per cent. are only nominally Roman Cath- 
olic. Really they are out of the Church altogether, 
utterly uncared for. These people are very receptive 
to the evangelical faith. They are especially open- 
minded to the faith, worship and polity of the Luth- 


ITS FIELDS 79 


eran Church. To a very marked degree, owing to 
various causes, they are much out of sympathy with 
the Roman Catholic Church. This is especially true 
in free and liberty-loving America. Learning to know 
the Protestant Reformation with its fruits of civil and 
religious liberty, they become interested in the Protes- 
tant Church. As they come into contact with its mem- 
bers this favorable impression is strengthened and 
deepened. They gradually lose the fear of excom- 
munication and make bold to enter a Protestant church 
for worship and instruction. Then begins their trans- 
formation in religious faith and life on the basis of 
the open Bible. 

Work among the Italians was started by the late 
_ Mrs. E. R. Cassaday, in the city of Philadelphia. This 
work was later assumed by the Ministerium of Penn- 
sylvania. This mission, St. Peter’s Italian Lutheran 
Church, is maintained in connection with the Martin 
Luther Neighborhood House, which has a staff of 
three workers, not counting the Italian pastor. Kin- 
dergarten work, Bible Study classes and Americaniza- 
tion classes are conducted. 

The Immigrants Board, which long ago took over 
the Italian work and erected it into a Department, 
also has an Italian mission at Monessen, Pennsylvania, 
a steel town near Pittsburgh, where there are 4,000 
Italians. This mission was begun by the Pittsburgh 
Synod in 1918, with 22 members. Now the member- 
ship is 79, and the active:communicant membership 
56. The mission was organized by the Superinten- 
dent of the Italian Department. Recently the Pitts- 
burgh Synod has agreed to contribute $5,000 toward 


80 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


the erection of a permanent church for the Italian 
Lutheran Church at Monessen. 

In 1922 the Superintendent organized the Holy 
Trinity Italian Lutheran Church of Erie, Pennsyl- 
vania, with twenty members. This is the most prom- 
ising mission the Board has organized to date. This 
is largely due to the splendid co-operation of the Luth- 
eran congregations of Erie, which have provided a 
centrally located church property, fully equipped for 
every branch of the work, namely, a parish house and 
a chapel seating 250 persons. The cost was more than 
$14,000. The chapel is in the heart of the Italian com- 
munity, which has a population of 8,000. There are 
10,000 Italians in Erie, for whom our Board is con- 
ducting the only Protestant mission. The services are 
in Italian and English; the Sunday school, which has 
an enroliment of 150, is conducted entirely in English. 
During the week there are held, as in the other Italian 
missions, classes in English and citizenship and wel- 
fare work. The pastor is the Superintendent of the 
Italian Department, but it is hoped soon to have a 
settled pastor so as to allow the Superintendent to 
enter other territory where the doors are opening for 
Italian work. One of the young men of this congre- 
gation has applied for financial aid as a theological 
student. The Board is supporting three theological 
students, who work during the summer at mission 
points. 

Work was begun among the Italians in New York 
City late in the year 1923. This work has been in 
charge of the Rev. Cosimo D. Dell’Osso since January, 
1924. Services are held twice weekly, on Sundays and 


ITS FIELDS 81 


Thursdays, in Christ Lutheran Church, of which the 
Rev. Dr. Geo. U. Wenner is pastor. There is an aver- 
age attendance of about thirty men and women. There 
is a Sunday school with an enrollment of sixty-seven 
and an average attendance of about thirty-five. About 
the same number attend the classes in Weekday Reli- 
gious Education. Members of the Luther League of 
New York City help as teachers in the Sunday school. 
Financial assistance, in addition to the appropriation 
by the Immigrants Mission Board, is given the mis- 
sion by the New York and New England Synod and 
by several of the churches in New York City. There 
is bright prospect of the early organization of a flour- 
ishing congregation in this city with an Italian popu- 
lation of close to a million. 

Work has also been begun in Chicago, IIl., and San 
Francisco, Calif. 

In order to prosecute this work properly there must 
be provided a Lutheran ministry, one of Italian young 
men who are proficient in their own language and also 
have a good command of the English language. An- 
other imperative need is church buildings. Such meet- 
ing places as unsanitary, unsightly store-rooms have 
no attraction for people who are accustomed to wor- 
ship in ancient and artistic cathedrals and churches. 
They come from a land where church architecture and 
beauty is unsurpassed in all the world. This is true 
of the small towns as well as of the cities of Italy. 
To hold the services in English-speaking churches is 
satisfactory neither to the Italians nor to the local 
congregation. This does not admit of the use of the 
church building on every day of the week, as it should 


82 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


be in every Italian mission for the conducting of reli- 
gious, educational and vocational classes, nor on the 
festival days, such as Christmas and Easter, when the 
service would be especially attractive and fruitful. In 
Spite of these drawbacks, however, the department has 
five Italian pastors, three organized churches, and two 
missions recently organized, with a combined member- 
ship of over 200 adults, one lady parish worker and 
one student; and six Sunday schools with an enroll- 
ment of nearly 500 children and 85 teachers. The 
use of a lady parish worker is a new departure and a 
very successful one, for her work lies among the moth- 
ers and children. The new generation is growing rap- 
idly and in all directions. They are attending the public 
schools and high schools in our towns and cities. But 
they are outside the Church. A means of approach must 
be found. It has been found in Erie, where an English- 
speaking young lady, in connection with the Italian 
missionary and under his supervision, is endeavoring 
to reach the rising generation and bring them into the 
Church. More such workers are needed, who have the 
love of Christ and of souls in their hearts and who 
have the Italian as well as the English point of view. 
Given the workers for this field, the funds to sup- 
port them and to erect and equip houses of worship, 
and given the sympathy and co-operation of the local 
Lutheran congregations, the Italian work will advance 
by leaps and bounds; for the field is ripe and the 
harvest is ready to be gathered. 

Finnish Department. This department is conducted 
in connection with the Suomi Synod (Suomi means 
“Finnish”) with which it shares, on a 50-50 basis, 


ITS FIELDS 83 


in the payment of all expenses. This arrangement 
has been. in effect since 1920, when the Immigrants 
Board entered into agreement with the Suomi Synod 
to co-operate in ministering to the widely scattered 
Finnish Lutherans, of whom there are in this country 
between 400,000 and 500,000, 99 per cent. of whom 
are said to be Lutherans. They are found on farms, 
in coal mines, in iron mines, in copper and silver 
mines; they are upon our lake boats and upon our 
docks; in city as well as in country they are at work 
with others, helping to build up the country of which 
they are a part. Too long they have been neglected 
by our Church. The Suomi Synod, with the active 
Superintendent of this Department, who is also a mem- 
ber of the Synod, is doing its utmost to reach and 
minister to these dispersed thousands. But as the 
Synod numbers but 51 pastors, 177 congregations and 
18,440 confirmed members and through its congrega- 
tions and missions ministers to only about 80,000 
souls, it will be seen how large a part of the field re- 
mains uncultivated and how large a work awaits to 
be done. The Synod has congregations in New York, 
Massachusetts, Wisconsin, South Dakota, California, 
Montana, Washington, and Ontario, Canada. New 
and inviting doors of opportunity and entrance have 
been opened in the Provinces of Alberta and Saskat- 
chewan and in the States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, 
Minnesota, North Dakota and Idaho. These fields call 
aloud for workmen and promise a bountiful harvest. 
It is pathetic and even tragic that lack of men and 
money withholds the Suomi Synod from prosecuting 
this exigent work. 


84 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


West Indies Mission Board. 

This Board grew from two roots planted in the 
soil of the General Council. One was the “Board 
of Missions for Porto Rico and Latin America,” created 
in 1898 after the American forces occupied Porto 
Rico during the war with Spain; and the other was 
the “Board to Care for the Lutheran Churches of the 
Virgin Islands” after the United States had acquired 
those islands from Denmark, the said churches hav- 
ing been supervised and supported during the Danish 
regime by the Danish National Church, but thrown 
upon their own charges and management by the United 
States when the islands were taken Over, something 
for which the churches were totally unprepared. Thus 
the field assigned to the West Indies Mission Board 2 
the outstart was the West Indies and the territory ad 
jacent thereto, namely, Central America, the Cana) 
Zone and Mexico; and in 1924 it was authorized to 
enter upon work among the 7,000,000 unchurched ne- 
groes of America. It may here be said that the mis- 
sionaries working under this Board minister to both 
the white and colored residents of the West Indies 
Islands and that the language in use is almost entirely 
Spanish. 

Porto Rico, one of the West Indies in the Caribbean 
Sea, lying midway between North and South America, 
has an area of 3,600 square miles and a population 
of about 1,500,000, composed of 60 per cent. white, 
85 per cent. mixed blood, and 5 per cent. negro. Here 
work was begun soon after the entrance of the vic- 
torious American troops during the Spanish-American 
War, the first Lutheran services being held with 


ITS FIELDS 85 


Lutherans who emigrated from the Virgin Islands, 
whose nearest point from Porto Rico is only 90 miles 
away. In 1924 the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 
planting of our Church in Porto Rico was celebrated. 
The territory is divided into three districts, of which 
the oldest is that of San Juan, the capital city, in 
charge of the Rev. Dr. Alfred Ostrom, who has been 
on the field twenty years—a longer period than any 
other American missionary. This is the center of the 
work. Here is a fine church building, with a modern 
parsonage. The church is used by two congregations, 
with separate organization in every department of 
activity. One is the oldest and only English Lutheran 
Church in Porto Rico, and the other is St. Paul’s Span- 
ish congregation, organized in 1900. Four other con- 
gregations and two stations are in this district. Other 
districts having their own congregations and stations 
are those of Bayamon and Catano. The value of our 
church property in Porto Rico, consisting of church 
buildings, parsonages, homes for native helpers, school 
buildings and building sites, is estimated at $103,000, 
which represents the self-sacrificing gifts of our 
American Church. The confirmed membership is 
1,300, with about 700 members in good standing. There 
are 1,700 children in the Sunday schools and almost 
3,000 in the day schools. An interesting feature of 
the Porto Rico work is the part taken by our mission- 
aries in ministering to the unfortunate lepers who 
await their end on “Leper Island” in the harbor of 
San Juan. 

The Virgin Islands are a group of fifty-three islands, 
only three of which are inhabited. They support a 


— «86 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


population of about 25,000. It was for these islands 
that the United States paid Denmark $25,000,000, fol- 
lowing the Spanish-American War. At that time the 
Danish churches—established since 1666, when the 
first Lutheran pastor came from Denmark to the island 
of St. Thomas—were taken out of the hands of the 
Danish National Church and thrown upon their own 
resources. They found themselves helpless and ap- 
pealed to the Lutheran Church in America to come to 
their aid. The response was cheerfully given and 
they came under the care of the General Council’s 
Board appointed for the purpose. In the Virgin Islands 
are five organized congregations, divided into three 
parishes. The first parish consists of two congrega- 
tions, one in the city of St. Thomas on the island of 
the same name, and one on the island of St. John. 
Another parish, on the island of St. Croix, is the 
Christiansted parish, in which lies the Government’s 
leper colony, where our pastor conducts regular serv- 
ices. Here is located one of the homes for sick and 
neglected babies. The third parish is the Frederik- 
sted parish, one of whose churches has been in con- 
stant use for one hundred and thirty years. Here is 
located the Ebenezer Orphanage, a fine property. Here 
also is another home for sick and neglected babies. 
The baptized Lutheran population of these islands is 
2.050, with a confirmed membership in good standing 
of over 1,000. The Sunday school and day school have 
an enrollment of 1,000 children. 

In this entire field, during the biennium of 1922-24, 
seven American pastors were at work full time and 
four part time. Seven women missionaries also lab- 


ITS FIELDS 87 


ored the full period and six part time. There are at 
work four deaconesses and twenty native assistants, 
eleven men and nine women, making fifty full time 
workers in all. There are nineteen organized congre- 
gations, with eleven preaching points, and twenty-six 
Sunday schools. The baptized membership is 3,841 
and the confirmed 2,158. In the Sunday schools are 
enrolled 2,386 children. The congregations raised 
over $9,000 for their support. The total valuation 
of the property is $400,000, more than half of which 
came from the Danish National Church at the time of 
the transfer of the Virgin Islands to the United States. 
From the inception of the work in Porto Rico, the 
Augustana Synod has generously co-operated, and the 
United Danish Synod has given assistance for the 
work in the Virgin Islands. The Women’s Missionary 
Society has been notably interested and liberal and is 
to be credited with furnishing much of the “sinews 
of war” by means of which the gratifying gains have 
been made. 

There is urgent need for Spanish-speaking pastors 
and preachers. Happily, this need has good prospect 
of being met. A theological seminary is about to be 
established in Porto Rico for the education of Spanish 
workers, this having been made possible by a legacy 
of $30,000 left for this purpose by the late Rev. R. L. 
McMurray, a devoted friend of the work. The effort 
is also being made to establish contact with the Evan- 
gelical Church in Spain with a view to securing min- 
isters for the thousands of Spaniards coming to the 
United States from South American countries, which 
are not affected by our immigration laws. Already 


88 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Texas has a Spanish-speaking population of 450,000; 
New Mexico, 250,000; Arizona, 100,000, and California 
nearly as many. Some towns and cities in these 
States are almost 100 per cent. Mexican. Indeed, a 
real Spanish problem is looming up before our coun- 
try and before the Christian Church. The countries 
occupying the southern half of our continent are more 
and more coming to the front and immigrants from 
them are overflowing into our own land. Spanish is 
rightly being introduced as one of the branches taught 
in our public schools with a view to meeting the de- 
mands of the business world, and our Church is equally 
wise in preparing to meet the religious needs of the 
Spanish-speaking peoples. Already over 2,000 Span- 
ish people regularly attend the church services con- 
ducted by the West Indies Board, and it is most grati- 
fying to announce that a literature in Spanish is being 
created—the Catechism, the Graded Sunday School 
Lessons and the Common Service Book and Hymnal 
having been prepared in that language. Some of this 
literature has already received publication. 

But notwithstanding all these accomplishments, 
very much land still remains to be possessed. Calls 
have come (for twenty years they have been coming) 
from Santo Domingo, an island seven times larger 
than Porto Rico, with a population of 1,000,000, where 
some 500 of our members from Porto Rico and the 
United States have emigrated; from the great and 
rich island of Cuba, only a few hours’ sail from the 
United States, with its 2,000,000 of people and not a 
single Lutheran church; and from Mexico, where the 
need is no less great and where the last constitution 


ITS FIELDS 89 


adopted opens an opportunity for Protestant work 
such as has seldom been equaled in this western world. 
But more missionaries and money are needed—more 
than the Board at present is able to command—to 
enter these inviting and promising fields. 

One field, however, has been entered so successfully 
that it is as great a pleasure to tell about it as it will 
be to be told. For the last fifty years, owing to local 
poor economic conditions, West Indians from “our” 
islands have been emigrating to and locating in New 
York City. There they found no church of their own 
and there on account of their race and color they were 
uncomfortable in the white congregations of their own 
faith. In that period perhaps as many as 3,000 such 
Lutheran immigrants were lost to our Church, many 
of them, perhaps, to themselves and their God. But 
on February 22, 1920, in the providence of God and 
by the enterprise of Rev. Z. M. Corbe, the Secretary 
of the Board, the first step was taken to stop the leak 
and prevent the loss. On that day services were begun 
in Harlem, New York City, for the West Indians, and 
a mission was established. In three years the work 
had grown to such an extent that no hall large enough 
could be secured to hold the people. So, in January, 
1923, a property suitable for the purpose was pur- 
chased by the Board at a cost of $57,000. That the 
West Indians appreciated the Board’s action is evi- 
denced by the fact that during the year 1923 they 
contributed, out of their poverty, $4,500 toward the 
expenses of the work. The congregation has increased 
100 members for each year of its life and now num- 
bers over 480 communicants and is today the largest 


90 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


colored Lutheran Church in the country. On July 31, 
1924, the congregation was organized as the “Evan- 
gelical Lutheran Church of the Transfiguration,” so 
named after the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the 
Transfiguration, Philadelphia, of which the Executive 
Secretary of the Board, Rev. Z. M. Corbe, is pastor; 
in which also he preaches on Sunday mornings and 
in the evening is present in the Harlem namesake, 
of which he has pastoral oversight, the services like- 
wise being conducted under his personal direction. 
But the full scope of the field of the West Indies 
Board has not yet been described. In 1920 the United 
Lutheran Church not only heartily commended the 
Board’s new enterprise in New York City, but re- 
quested, further, that it make a survey of the whole 
field of American negroes. This is truly a field of large 
proportions and one into which the United Lutheran 
Church has hitherto not sought to enter. The “negro 
problem” remains a problem and it has become one 
not less for the North than for the South, not less 
for the Church than for the nation. Sixty years ago 
92 per cent. of the negroes lived in the South; ten 
years ago 89 per cent.; now about 85 per cent. The 
entire negro population of the country is almost 12,- 
000,000, of whom 9,000,000 are in the South today. 
That means that nearly 3,000,000 have emigrated to 
the cities of the North, being driven from the cotton 
fields by the boll weevil and being desirous of higher 
wages, better housing and better schooling for their 
children. During the last few years the negro exodus 
from the agricultural South to the industrial centers 
of the North has been markedly great, and in those 


ITS FIELDS 91 


cities and centers the negroes have established dis- 
tricts of their own. Said one of their leaders: “All 
problems of health, education, government, vice and 
crime, inter-racial contacts and others, must be re- 
garded as questions for the Northerner as well as for 
the Southerner.” So also must the religious problem 
which the negro presents be a problem for the whole 
American Church; for 7,000,000 negroes are beyond 
the ministrations of the Church and the influences of 
the Gospel, and they present a Home Mission field 
which lies at our very doors. 

It was this great and needy field which the West In- 
dies Board surveyed. It laid its survey before the 
United Lutheran Church in 1922, and in its findings 
stated that the United Lutheran Church has not only a 
great opportunity but a very pressing call to preach 
the Gospel to the 7,000,000 unevangelized and unshep- 
herded negroes of America, but that, recognizing the 
existence of this unusual opportunity, the Board was 
not able to recommend beginning work in this field 
at this time with any assurance of success, both on 
account of a lack of funds for such an undertaking, 
and the unpreparedness of our people for this bewil- 
dering task. At the convention of the United Lutheran 
Church in 1924, the Board re-affirmed its interest in 
work among this group of our population and de- 
clared its willingness to co-operate with synods which 
desire to inaugurate such work in their own field, 
under certain restrictions and regulations, affording 
aid out of its treasury for the purpose. The whole 
proposition was submitted, subject to the action of the 
United Lutheran Church. It was approved, and the 


92 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


West Indies Mission Board is therefore authorized and 
instructed to co-operate in any work undertaken with- 
in the bounds of any constituent synod of the United 
Lutheran Church, provided that it have the approval 
of the proper synodical authorities, that it continue 
under the jurisdiction of the synod in whose bound- 
aries it is located, that it be supervised by the West 
Indies Board only in such matters as require the 
specialized knowledge of the Board, and that any sup- 
port for the work be furnished only from such funds 
as may be placed in the budget for the special purpose 
and so approved by the United Lutheran Church. 
Under these instructions and provisions, active steps 
have been taken in Charleston, South Carolina, look- 
ing to the establishment of a Lutheran mission among 
the negro population of that city, and the West Indies 
Board has made an appropriation for the prosecution 
of the enterprise. Thus at last (and at least) a be- 
ginning has been made. The field is actually being 
entered. The United Lutheran Church in America 
is on record that it is conscious of a mission to the 
unchurched colored people of the United States as 
well as to those who inhabit the isles of the sea. 


Committee on Jewish Missions. 

The importance which the United Lutheran Church 
accords to Jewish Missions may be realized from the 
fact that it is the first Lutheran body, and for that 
matter the first Protestant body in America, that has 
placed Jewish Missions on the official missionary pro- 
gram of the Church. This is all the more surprising 
in view of the Church’s manifest duty to evangelize 


ITS FIELDS 93 


the Jew. The Jews have upon it the same general 
claim for evangelization as all other branches of the 
human family. They are not Christian, and just for 
that reason they are included in the divine command, 
“Teach all nations,” “Preach the Gospel to every 
creature.” Salvation is not only “of the Jews,” but 
“for the Jews.” Historically, Jewish Missions holds 
first place among the missionary activities of the 
Christian Church. The apostles and even the Lord 
Jesus Himself were first of all Jewish Missionaries. 
What Paul declared of the Gospel of Christ—that it 
is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that 
believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek”—is 
true today. It is reliably stated that during the nine- 
teenth century more than 200,000 Jews in Europe 
alone turned from the synagogue to the Church. The 
Gospel is said to be proclaimed each Lord’s Day in 
more than 600 pulpits by Jewish lips, there being 350 
Hebrew Christians among the clergy in Great Britain 
alone. Since the World War the Jews seem to be 
more approachable. It was reported at the Zurich 
Conference in 1923 that in the single country of Hun- 
gary 30,000 Jews had joined the Christian Church in 
the past four years. So that the task of their con- 
version is not as impossible as many people imagine. 
Highty per cent. of the Jews are outside the synagogue 
and the break they must make to enter the Christian 
Church is not so much with Judaism as with materia]- 
ism and indifferentism. Many Christian people see in 
this step away from the synagogue a step toward the 
Church; but to induce them to take the decisive second 
step requires on the part of the Jewish missionaries 


94 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


trust and toil and the patience which must be allowed 
to have its perfect work. 

This is the aim and object of the Committee on Jew- 
ish Missions, and of the missionaries who are actively 
serving in the field. And that field is very large. There 
are in the United States and Canada, the territory 
covered by the United Lutheran Church in America, 
at least 4,000,000 Jews (their number in the world 
is estimated at 17,000,000). New York City is cred- 
ited with a Jewish population of 1,800,000, many more 
than reside in the “Holy Land” today, and three times 
more than reside in the whole of Germany. Cleveland 
has 100,000, as many as England. Pittsburgh has 
50,000, as many as France. There are 33 cities in the 
United States which have 10,000 or more Jews; 10 
cities with 50,000 or more; 2 cities with 200,000 or 
more, while one city, as we have seen, has almost 
2,000,000. | 

Into this large and challenging field have entered 
the evangelizing agencies of the Protestant Churches, 
and among them the Committee on Jewish Missions 
of our United Lutheran Church. Work was first be- 
gun by the Pittsburgh Synod in Pittsburgh in 1906, 
and the missionary worker was Rev. John Legum, our 
pioneer missionary to the Jews, who labored in season 
and out of season to the day of his death. A mysteri- 
ous and apostolic man! Born in Russia, educated in 
Germany, baptized in Paris, he lived for only one 
thing, to preach Christ to his people. “Without funds, 
but with an unshaken faith, with every thinkable per- 
sonal sacrifice, with untiring devotion, with holy zeal 
for Christ’s reign over Israel, and with a profound 


ITS FIELDS , 95 


understanding of his own people and a burning love 
for their salvation, he laid down his life for his breth- 
ren in the flesh.” His truest memorial is “Christ 
Mission to the Jews” in the city of Pittsburgh. One 
of his converts, a young Jew, was educated in the 
schools of our Church, and after spending seven years 
in a pastorate, in 1917 founded the “Messiah Lutheran 
Mission” in Philadelphia. A promising young con- 
vert, educated in the Middle West, on a visit to the 
HKastern States, made the acquaintance of our Phila- 
delphia missionary, was persuaded by him to take up 
Lutheran mission work and is now the missionary in 
charge of the “Salem Hebrew Lutheran Mission” in 
Baltimore, established in 1919. A convert of the 
Norwegian Lutheran Church Mission to the Jews in 
Chicago and a graduate of our Chicago Theological 
Seminary, has become the missionary in charge of the 
“Emmanuel Lutheran Mission” in Toledo, established 
in 1922. A Philadelphia convert, after a special course 
in the Philadelphia Theological Seminary, was or- 
dained by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in 1923 
and was placed in charge of the Philadelphia Mission. 
The Philadelphia missionary is holding himself in 
readiness to open a mission in New York City as soon 
as the Committee has the means and is able to carry 
out its plans. 

Although the number of baptisms reported is not 
large, many hundreds of Jews are reached by the mis- 
sionaries inside (and outside) the mission. There are 
results and conversions of the heart unconfessed and 
unrecorded. ‘There are those of the Nicodemus type, 
the silent, secret believers. There are the Agrippas: 


96 - A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. There 
are the men who feel bound by family obligations: 
Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. There 
are those who pray: Lord, I believe, help thou mine 
unbelief. We cannot produce them nor count them. 
We are dealing with them constantly. We cannot and 
will not forcibly persuade them into baptism.” And 
so the missionaries continue faithfully to sow the good 
seed of the Word—in the pulpit, in the Bible schools, 
in the homes, on the streets,—by word of mouth and 
by the distribution of tracts, Bibles and New Testa- 
ments. 

The Committee and the missionaries themselves 
keenly realize that the dimensions of the field and of 
the need far exceed their resources and power. Hence 
they appeal to pastors and congregations in Jewish 
neighborhoods and in cities having a large Jewish 
population, to have a living, loving concern for the 
Jews in their community. In the language of the 
Committee: “The cause of Jewish Missions will only 
then become the task of the Church, when every con- 
gregation will accept its field as Jewish mission terri- 
tory and with prayer and aggressiveness lay plans 
and make attempts to win their Jewish neighbors for 
Christ. The counsel and assistance of our experienced 
missionary force is at the disposal of any congrega- 
tion courageous enough to enter upon this task.” “‘The 
time has come,” writes the Philadelphia missionary, 
“when Jewish Missions, in order to justify their exist- 
ence must begin intensive rather than extensive work. 
The time has come when we must emphasize the work 
at the individual stations rather than the General 


ITS FORCES 97 


Cause. The individual missions must learn to look 
for local support rather than for big appropriations 
from the treasury of the United Lutheran Church. 
The time has come when missions should be under the 
direct control of the synodical bodies on whose terri- 
tory they are, in order that they may receive not 
merely their chief financial support but also their 
moral support, counsel and advice.”” Thus there would 
be enlisted in this challenging cause—which must be 
dear to the heart of the Master—not only the United 
Lutheran Church, but also the district synod, the 
neighboring pastor, the local congregation and the 
individual members thereof, giving of their means to 
promote the work and also their offers of personal 
service. 


WOULD I? WOULD YOU? 


One day in loved Jerusalem, 

There rushed a shrieking, maddened crowd 
Upon a lowly kneeling form, 

Before his God and Saviour bowed, 

And when with cruel stones they crushed 
His beautiful and gentle life, 

He prayed the Father to forgive 

Their ignorance and raging strife. 

This man was Stephen. Lo, a Jew, 
Who died for Christ. 

Would I? Would you? 


See! far upon a lonely isle, 

An aged man with snowy locks, 
Exiled to labor in the mines, 

His only temple wind-swept rocks. 
Ah! Once he leaned on Jesus’ breast, 
And gazed with fond adoring eyes 
Into that face where love divine 


98 


A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Still beams upon us from the skies 
This man was John beloved, a Jew, 
Witness for Christ. 

Am I? Are you? 


A Galilean fisher stood 

Amid a fierce and angry throng, 

No tremor spoke of hidden fear, 

His face was peaceful, calm and strong, 
And when they nailed him to a cross, 
As they had nailed his blessed Lord, 
He gloried thus to die for Christ, 
And counted it a rich reward. 

This man was Peter. Lo, a Jew, 
Who died for Christ. 

Would I? Would you? 


A captive bound was brought one day 
To Nero’s judgment seat at Rome: 
For Christ he wore the heavy chain, 
For Christ he had no wealth nor home; 
The noblest martyr Rome could boast 
Of all the thousands that she slew, 
The great apostle sent by God 
To Gentiles with the message true. 
This man was Paul, e’en Paul, the Jew, 
Who died for Christ. 
Would I? Would you? 

—Contributed. 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


. What three Mission Boards and what Committee are treated 


of in this chapter? 


. What is the province of the Board of Northwestern Mis- 


sions and what is the extent of its field? 


. What is the need of this field and by what is the need 


augmented? 


- Tell of the devotion and self-denial of the missionaries and 


from what sources supplies are obtained. 


ITS FORCES 99 


. In what way is the problem of our immigrant population 


both a spiritual and a patriotic one? 


. What is the function of the Immigrants Mission Board? 
. Into what three departments is the work of this Board 


divided? 


. Why did the Board find it necessary to departmentalize its 


work? 


. Discuss the work of the Slav and Hungarian Department. 
. Discuss the work of the Italian Department. 

. Discuss the work of the Finnish Department. 

. What is the field assigned to the West Indies Mission 


Board? 


. Tell something of its work in Porto Rico. 
. Tell something of its work in the Virgin Islands. 
. What call comes to the West Indies Board from the pres- 


ence of Spanish-speaking people? 


. What successful mission has the Board established in the 


United States? 


. What is the relation of the Board to the evangelization of 


our country’s millions of unchurched negroes? 


. Discuss the work of the Committee on Jewish Missions. 
. Read or recite “Would I? Would You?” 


CHAPTER V 
ITS FORCES 


The supreme Factor in Home Missions, as in all 
missions, is God the Heavenly Father, whose is the 
Kingdom, and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 
who is the great Head of the Church. A Factor equ- 
ally supreme is the Holy Spirit, who “calls, gathers, 
enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church 
on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ 
in the true faith.” The means through which the call 
to come to Christ is made to men is the Gospel and 
it is made by the living voice—it is announced or 
proclaimed to men by men. It was so from the begin- 
ning. The Lord Jesus began His ministry with say- 
ing, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God 
is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the Gospel.” The 
Book of Acts (also called “The Gospel of the Holy 
Ghost” because of the Spirit’s manifest presence and 
powerful influence in the planting and spread of the 
Church) is a Manual on Missions, and there Peter 
and John and Philip and Barnabas and Paul and all 
the other apostolic missionaries do their work by 
preaching the Gospel and bearing witness to the grace 
and truth which came by Jesus Christ. It has always 
been so. Redemption goes forward only as men carry 
it forward. By men God blesses men. He has con- 
stituted His Church as the instrument by which He 
will save the world and the means He employs is still 
the everlasting Gospel of our blessed Saviour, which 

100 : 


ITS FORCES 101 


then and now and to the end of time is the power of 
God unto salvation. 

But this tremendous task cannot be accomplished by 
men in their individual capacity alone. Already in 
the Gospels and in the Acts we see missionaries work- 
ing in pairs and the Church organizing for effective 
service. There must be combination and co-operation. 
As in building the walls of Jerusalem it was said, “The 
work is great and large, and we are separated upon 
the wall, one from another,” so in the immense Home 
Mission territory already described the distances are 
so vast and the Lutheran groups are so widely sun- 
dered, that practical efficiency has dictated the forma- 
tion of larger organizations for the prosecution of 
this work and of every work of a churchly and Chris- 
tian character. Individual Lutherans unite to form 
congregations, congregations unite to form synods, 
Synods unite to form a general body and the general 
body entrusts the specific work to its several boards 
by which the work is administered and prosecuted— 
always in co-operation with the said constituent synods, 
congregations and the individual members composing 
them. Thus has come to pass the organization of the 
United Lutheran Church in America and its creation 
of the several Home Mission Boards which have al- 
ready been mentioned and concerning which it now 
becomes necessary to speak more in particular. 

The Board first specified is the Board of Home Mis- 
sions and Church Extension, which has its headquar- 
ters in Chicago, and whose object is “to carry on, 
superintend and promote all the work of Home Mis- 
sions and Church Extension of the United Lutheran 


102 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Church in America not otherwise specially provided 
for.” It is authorized “to survey the territory, call 
and commission missionaries.” In the exercise of 
this authority it has divided the territory, as we have 
already learned, into four districts, each having its 
own District Superintendent, namely: the Eastern 
District, with headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
vania; the Southern District, with headquarters in 
Richmond, Virginia; the Central District, with head- 
quarters in Chicago, Illinois, and the Western District 
with headquarters in Berkeley, California. The Board 
has a General Secretary who is charged with the 
supervision of all the work of the Board. He stands 
at the head of the entire forces in the field. He is the 
Board’s Executive—its arm to give effect to its plans. 
Under him are the four District Superintendents, who 
have the oversight of the missions in their respective - 
territories and keep in touch with them through the 
Synodical Superintendent—if the synod has one. 
(There are 386 synods in the United Lutheran Church 
and to date (1924) their field staff numbers 21). The 
Synodical Superintendent is the synod’s agent for the 
promotion of mission work within its own bounds. 
He may also serve in the field as a field missionary. 
He counsels with the District Superintendent in mat- 
ters of mission management as well as establishment 
and enlargement. If the synod is large and covers 
an extensive territory there may also be Field Secre- 
taries, as in the United Synod of North Carolina, 
where there is a field missionary for the eastern and 
another for the western part of the State. The field 
missionary is under the Synodical Superintendent or 


ITS FORCES 103 


the District Superintendent, as the case may be, and 
his duties are twofold: he locates promising, prospec- 
tive mission points, and, when the work is begun, he 
serves temporarily as the pastor of the mission. In 
other words, he surveys the field, gathers the people, 
organizes the congregation, advises in the selection of 
a lot, helps to obtain funds to erect a church or chapel, 
and remains in charge until a regular pastor can be 
secured. Thus there is a chain of agencies, linking 
the General Office with the most distant mission point, 
an. admirable system throughout the whole process, 
which is, in reverse order: Missionary Pastor, Field 
Missionary or Synodical Superintendent, District 
Superintendent, General Board. To summarize: “The 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension, by 
constructive co-operation, economic administration, 
expert investigation, careful sustentation, liberal ap- 
propriation and zealous interest in their stewardship, 
begins congregations in strategic centers, develops 
local activities among Lutheran laymen, places conse- 
crated pastors in mission parishes, affords financial 
credit through Church Extension, and thus speedily 
develops self-sustaining congregations. These in turn 
generate new missions.” 

Of course, the missionary pastors themselves are, 
humanly speaking, the real basic force in building 
up the mission churches. They sustain the same rela- 
tion to their congregations as do the pastors of self- 
sustaining charges. The Board neither calls them 
nor dismisses them; these matters rest with the con- 
gregational unit. The Board, at most, approves of 
them as its missionary agents, and if it is not satisfied 


104 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


with their services the only thing it can do is to with- 
draw its support. These home missionaries, upwards 
of 400 in number, are a heroic band, truly conse- 
crated servants of the Church and of its Christ. Their 
salaries are meager, their work is hard. Moreover, 
they and their work are more or less obscure. The 
foreign missionary has a strange and interesting story 
to tell and can always get a hearing, but there is pre- 
cious little that is romantic and arresting about the 
home missionary and his work. He must simply plod 
on in patience, with the approval of a good conscience 
that his work is done faithfully according to his 
ability. Our home missionaries constitute a devoted 
corps of workers and there are no more noble and 
self-denying servants of the Cross. The following de- 
served tribute has been paid to them: “The home mis- 
sionary does not receive the praise and commendation 
of pupit and press that should be accorded to him. 
Yet it often happens that his field has greater diffi- 
culties and requires more heroism and sacrifice than 
are required in any other field. As a rule his salary 
is not so secure, nor is it paid so regularly. Sometimes 
he is on the frontier, where the drives are long, fre- 
quently over bad roads, where the congregations are 
small and his income very meager. His family is 
often poorly housed, and his exposure in all kinds of 
weather is an element in the problem which might 
cause even a brave heart to shrink. Home mission- 
aries have been known to ride 70 miles by stage to 
reach a new field when the thermometer indicated 20 
degrees below zero. Sometimes he is in a city, strug- 
gling with the difficulties of a new parish. A mis- 


ITS FORCES 105 


sionary in the city has other difficulties than those of 
a missionary in the country, but they are quite as 
real. All honor to the consecrated missionaries, whom 
the great Head of the Church has given us to carry 
on our work!” More, many more men are needed of 
this type, of the very highest type: men of unques- 
tioned ability, consecrated spirit and a perseverance 
that cannot be daunted by conditions which vex and 
try the soul, men, moreover, who cannot be lured from 
the field by tempting offers elsewhere. 

There is no intention or desire here to discriminate 
in favor of one Home Mission Board as over another; 
but what has been said of the Board of Home Mis- 
sions and Church Extension in the way of adminis- 
tration and procedure applies, other things being 
equal, also to the Board of Northwestern Missions, 
the Immigrants Mission Board, the West Indies Board 
and the Committee on Jewish Work. 

But this statement of the Home Mission Forces, as 
organized, would be incomplete without mention being 
made of the very substantial contribution to the cause 
given by the Woman’s Missionary Society of the 
United Lutheran Church in America. The aim of this 
society is threefold: to disseminate missionary infor- 
mation; to promote the missionary spirit, especially 
among women and children; and financially to aid the 
Church in its various activities by co-operating with 
its Boards. The Society appoints two advisory mem- 
bers of each Board to whose support it contributes, 
and these members are given a voice on all questions 
relevant to the work in which there is a mutual 
interest. 


106 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


This society is one of the most capable auxiliaries 
of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 
and without its generous support the work would be 
curtailed and suffer loss. During the biennium— 
1922-1924—the total receipts from the society by the 
Board for loan, interest, gifts and salary, were over 
$80,000. The work of the other Home Mission Boards 
likewise received liberal aid. Thirty-five missions 
were receiving appropriations toward their support 
at the opening of the biennium. By its close five had 
assumed self-support and seven new missions were 
added—three in the Rocky Mountain Synod, three in 
the Pacific Synod, and one in the South Carolina 
Synod. Appropriations to Home Missions averaged 
$2,100 per month. Church Extension aid was given 
to a number of mission churches. The Society sup- 
ported the two missionaries working in the mountains 
of North Carolina and Virginia, a woman assistant 
in Messiah Hebrew Lutheran Mission, Philadelphia, 
two new immigrant workers (women) among the 
Slovaks and Italians, students for the ministry to 
serve their own people (Italian, Slovak, etc.), a woman 
missionary in Porto Rico and another in the Virgin 
Islands, and the two homes for children in the Virgin 
Islands. The budget for 1924-1926 calls for appro- 
priations for Home Missions amounting to $127,120, 
distributed as follows: Support of Home Missions, 
$80,000; Immigrant Missions (education of students), 
$10,000; Jewish Work, $2,000; West Indies (support 
of Missionaries and Children’s Homes), $18,200; 
Southern Mission Work, $16,920. 

Here it is proper to state that at the convention of 


ITS FORCES | 107 


the United Lutheran Church in America held in Chi- 
cago in October, 1924, action was taken looking to 
the reorganization in the administration of the Home 
Mission work. The contemplated change is radical 
and far-reaching. The plan is to bring under one cen- 
tral management and oversight the work of the five 
Home Mission Boards—Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension, Northwestern Mission Board, Im- 
migrants Mission Board, West Indies Mission Board, 
and Committee on Jewish Missions. The project had 
been previously studied and the plan thoroughly 
worked out by a committee of ten representatives of 
the five Boards and chosen from them. Their conclu- 
gions were presented to the Executive Board and ap- 
proved by it as well as by the five Boards concerned. 
The purpose is to co-ordinate the various mission 
agencies and activities without having them lose their 
identity as distinctive causes and their right to separ- 
ate presentation to the whole Church. The new mission 
policy centers in the first item which reads as follows: 
“There shall be a Central Board of the United Luth- 
eran Church, which shall function through the synod- 
ical authorities and shall have power of determining 
the general policy, and shall be given such general 
administration as may be necessary for harmonious 
co-ordination of the various Home Mission interests 
and Church Extension work.” This feature of the plan 
places upon the synods the responsibility for initiative 
and action within their respective bounds, while the 
General Board, through its General Secretary, guards 
such absorption in and devotion to local synodical or 
favorite interests as would lead to the slighting or 


oy » Shae r mm a 


a 
108 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


neglect of the other mission activities of the United 
Lutheran Church. Another feature of the plan will 
departmentalize the work in such a manner that each 
particular branch of the missionary enterprise shall 
be cared for and managed efficiently by men who shall 
Specialize in those departments. This will tend to 
unify missionary activity within the Church and yet 
preserve the distinctiveness of each cause. 

We return to the present available forces for main- 
taining and promoting the Home Enterprise carried 
on by the United Lutheran Church. First, there is 
its staff of 2,924 pastors, through whose proclamation 
of the Gospel of Christ, with its closing and crowning 
missionary command, and through whose leadership 
of the enrolled membership of the Church, the work is 
forwarded and obediently done. Then there are the 
3,812 congregations—so many district companies 
charged with the duty to enter this great and needy 
field and conquer and acquire it for the Church and 
Kingdom of Christ. This duty is not restricted to the 
payment of the apportionment promptly and in full. 
It is limited only by ability and opportunity. What 
is meant is this: just as some large and affluent con- 
gregations support missionaries and certain forms 
of missionary activity in the foreign field, so should 
they also study the home field and consider its needs 
and favor it with a share of their funds. “Charity be- 
gins at home.” It does not “stop there,” it is true, 
but—it does begin there. And such a beginning has 
been made by more than one congregation. Here is a 
United Lutheran Church congregation paying $1,000 
on a Home Mission pastor’s salary in a city hundreds 





CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT, WYOMISSING, PA. 


Pennsylvania still a Fruitful Mission Field 


SGNV'ISI NIOUIA ‘GULSNVILSIVHO ‘HOUNHOD NVYAHLNT 





ITS FORCES | 109 


of miles away. Here is another congregation aiding 
a mission church in a neighboring State and here is 
still another aiding a mission church in the same State. 
Here is a fourth congregation which is the proud and 
happy mother of two missions. Here is a “brother’s- 
keeper” congregation which has mortgaged its prop- 
erty to finance the establishment of a mission in the 
uptown section of the city. Here is another liberal 
congregation which has mortgaged its property for 
$10,000 in order to establish a mission in another 
city. Other instances could be cited. When once the 
older congregations, with property free and clear, bor- 
row and lend to missions, these corporate congrega- 
tions may be reckoned among the leading Home Mis- 
sion Forces. A writer says with truth: “There are 
cities in which the United Lutheran Church is repre- 
sented by large and wealthy congregations. One would 
scarcely think so if one counted the number of missions 
and poorer congregations in these same cities, which 
are struggling for years against odds in shacks and 
basements, or which are burdened with debts they can 
scarcely carry. More than one promising field has 
been robbed of its possibilities because it has lacked 
local sympathy and support. Missionaries and pastors 
have felt themselves isolated and abandoned and have 
become discouraged in consequence. They often feel 
themselves discounted in the eyes of the Church and 
lose that buoyancy of spirit which is so essential to 
their success. They see church buildings of missions 
in other denominations rising up under their very 
eyes and drawing Lutherans away from their par- 
ishes, and they naturally ask the question, Why do 


110 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


these get local help and encouragement and not we? 
Is it not time for us Lutherans to wake up and to in- 
sist that the well-to-do people and congregations of 
our cities hold themselves responsible for the support 
of the extension work of the Kingdom which lies next 
door to them? In some cities this has been done, 
and it is there where the Lutheran Church need not be 
ashamed of itself.” 

This is a situation and an obligation which should 
challenge the attention of the Church Councils of our 
stronger city churches. The Church Councils of the 
123 United Lutheran Church congregations of Phila- 
delphia are reported to have taken a step in this direc- 
tion. To the number of 250 they have held a meeting 
and discussed soul-winning and stewardship for the 
community as well as for their separate parishes. In 
every large city of the land'our congregations could 
make a large and enduring contribution to Lutheran 
efficiency and growth by devising a way by which a 
city-wide movement for soul-winning could be carried 
on and by which, moreover, its results could be con- 
solidated and conserved. 

Still another force, and one of huge proportions, 
is that of the 840,000 confirmed members of the United 
Lutheran Church. How many of these can comfort- 
ably answer the challenge, “Show at what rate you 
prize your own blessings, pardon of your sins, peace 
with God, the hope of heaven, by your eagerness to 
impart the same to others?” And yet it was just 
that motive—one of love and _ gratitude—which 
prompted and impelled the missionary apostles and 
evangelists, and has actuated their successors ‘to this 


ITS FORCES 111 


day. Not necessarily ordained ministers only. Also 
laymen. It was to laymen that St. Paul wrote, “Have 
your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel 
of peace,” that is, Be prepared to go forth at a mo- 
ment’s notice to make that peaceable Gospel known. 
Christ’s whole program for the salvation of the indi- 
vidual and of society as a whole is based on personal 
service on the part of His disciples in His Spirit and 
according to His plans. That is the way in which 
Christianity has been spread and it is the only way in 
which it can be spread. It is His religion present in 
the hearts of His disciples and rising to their lips, 
_ their mouths speaking out of the abundance of their 
hearts, which causes this advance to take place. Per- 
sonal service is at the very center of the program of 
Christ to win the world. Personal evangelism is 
soundly Scriptural, practical, and it is effectual. 
Certainly it requires no great effort or courage to 
ask one’s unchurched neighbor or friend to accompany 
one to the house of God or even the stranger met 
casually on the street. By such personal work, by 
bringing people to church, by witnessing for Christ 
to men and women,—yes, and to children, gathering 
them into the Sunday school, any one can become a 
home missionary. And we can always pray—pray for 
the home missionaries, for their missions, for the 
mission of our great Evangelical Church in the home- 
land, whether one is an American or a Canadian. A 
recent writer, accounting in part for the millions bap- 
tized in the Lutheran faith who are now unchurched, 
is not wide of the mark when he says: “One reason 
why 90 per cent. of our people [he is speaking of the 


112 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Pacific District] remain outside the Church is this, 
that we in the Church have been sadly lacking in the 
spirit of intercession. We have not prayed for them 
as we ought to have prayed. We have been too self- 
centered—busy with building and organizing and 
even preaching and instructing. But when it came to 
plead with God for lost souls, we fell short. So few 
of us have followed the example of Abraham when 
he pleaded for Lot and his family. God has been 
waiting in vain to hear the real, burning intercession 
for mercy on our brothers outside the Church. For 
God indeed wants such intercession. When you study 
the Gospels by Luke and John you will find a surpris- 
ing number of instances where God enjoins interces- 
sion and promises to fulfill such prayers. If we only 
had more of the spirit of intercession, how differently 
we would go forth to rescue the 90 per cent. outside 
our churches. Soon they would be made to feel that 
we had higher aims than merely building and organiz- 
ing. These are only means to an end. And the end 
is the salvation of precious souls. All other matters 
are secondary and of importance only as they lead 
up to this. If the pastors and congregations began 
to batter the doors of heaven with fervent prayer, con- 
ditions would soon change. But because we go silent, 
neglecting our privilege, depending too much on our 
own resources and ingenuity, thousands go about out- 
side our churches, not realizing their danger. Who 
dares deny that we are guilty here and in a large 
measure responsible for the condition of the un- 
churched ?” 

Finally, in His discourse concerning the Vine and 


ITS FORCES 113 


the Branches (John 15:1-16) the Saviour declared 
that every disciple of His was a branch in Him, and 
that its first duty was to be fruitful. It was to be 
a force exerted for Him and His Kingdom and its 
effect was to be the production of fruit. “I chose you, 
and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, 
and that your fruit should abide.” What is meant by 
this “abiding” fruit? Fruit which is not consumed, 
fruit which does not decay. Souls are meant, saved 
souls, souls saved by the word of those whom He has 
saved. The fruit which Jesus expects from His chosen 
ones is the conversion of men to the faith of the Gos- 
pel, the ingathering of souls into the Kingdom of God. 
In making this demand, Jesus said, in effect, to His 
apostles then and says to His disciples now: “Go into 
all the world, evangelize all the nations; be fruitful 
and multiply, reproduce your kind in the regenerate 
life, and replenish the earth.” If all these 840,000 
branches of the Vine were fruitful! If but a tenth, 
a hundredth were fruitful! Then what a resultful 
force they would be! What a harvest of fruit, of 
souls, they would bear and bring! What a source of 
blessing they would prove to be to their neighbors 
and fellowmen, and in and through them to the land 
of their nativity or adoption! 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


1. What are the factors in the Home Mission Enterprise? 

2. What is the need for combination and co-operation and how 
has this need been met? 

8. What is the function of the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension? 


114 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


4, Who, under God, constitute the real basic force in building 
up the mission churches? 

5. What contribution to the Home Mission Enterprise is made 
by the Women’s Missionary Society? 

6. What radical change in the administration of its Home 
Mission work is contemplated by the United Lutheran 
Church? 

7. How may our congregations, as a force, become more 
forceful? 

8. Are laymen to be counted among the forces of the Home 
Mission Enterprise? 

9. Of what force is fervent, effectual prayer? 

10. What lesson is to be learned from the parable of the Vine 
and the Branches? 


CHAPTER VI 
ITS FINANCES 


Another word for “Finances” is money, and with- 
out this “wherewithal” no enterprise can be carried 
on or go forward. Hence in the preceding pages and 
in the whole presentation of the subject thus far, the 
matter of money and income has _ been touched on 
again and again. In the previous chapter it naturally 
and almost necessarily obtruded itself among the 
“Forces,” and it was seen what some congregations 
are doing in the way of financing mission churches 
and also what the Women’s Missionary Society is 
doing in the way of providing support for the various 
activities of the Home Mission Enterprise. 

To some it may seem strange and unnatural that 
such a spiritual institution as the Church, in its 
promulgation of the divine Gospel and its extension 
of the heavenly Kingdom, should be so largely depend- 
ent for the progress and success of its work upon so 
material a thing as mere money. Nevertheless, this 
ig the actual state of the case in the providence of 
God and by the arrangement of God, and the Church 
offers no apology in making its appeal for funds. 
Money is the “without-which-not” for the maintenance 
of every institution of the Church and the support 
and advancement of every agency and activity of the 
Church. “The ordinary means of propagating the 
Kingdom is through the instrumentality of the stew- 

115 


116 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


ardship of possessions, entrusted to God’s people for 
this avowed purpose.” 

Money is needed—and men. Or, if you please, men 
and money. Perhaps men should be named first, for 
if a sufficient number of men were forthcoming to do 
the work demanding to be done, adequate supplies of 
money would doubtless be vouchsafed to support the 
workmen. The personal consecration which would 
lead larger numbers of young men to offer themselves 
for this work of the Lord and which would lead more 
Christian parents to influence their sons and turn 
their minds towards the Gospel ministry, would have 
its second-fruits in more general and generous gifts 
to support and promote that work. Having first given 
themselves to the Lord, the giving of what is theirs 
would follow naturally as a thing of course. These 
gifts would be “piety’s deposit fund,” as an old Church 
Father called it. The fact is, the amount of money 
which men contribute according to their several ability 
is a pretty sure measure of the depth and reality of 
their actual piety. “A man’s private-account book 
is generally the most accurate commentary on his deep- 
est convictions.” 

At all events, “Give us men” is the first cry of these 
Home Mission Boards, and their second cry is, “Give 
us money.” This language reminds one of the answer 
made to Louis XI by one of his marshals, when that 
monarch asked him what was needed to make war: 
“Three things,” he said, “money, more money, always 
money.” Of course, soldiers too. But the equipment 
and support of an army cost money. Without men and 
money—“more money, always money”—the forces in 


ITS FINANCES 117 


charge of the Home Mission Enterprise cannot en- 
large it and extend the Church in the far-flung and 
needy fields and make conquest of the nation for God 
and for His Christ. 

This is not the place to assemble the passages of 
Scripture which speak of the duty and privilege of 
liberal giving nor yet to preach a printed sermon on 
the subject of stewardship. Three things, however, 
may be pointed out in connection with our Lord’s par- 
able of the Unjust Steward recorded in Luke 16: 1-9. 
One is that the mere possession of riches is not repre- 
sented as an evil (some of the Lord’s own disciples 
_ were rich men), but only the unjust and unwise use 
of them. A second is that the sin connected with mam- 
mon consists not in being the stewards of God, but 
in forgetting that we are. A third is the application 
which the Lord makes at the close of the parable, 
which has been paraphrased in this way: “J say unto 
you, make to yourselves friends with the mammon of 
unrighteousness (so-called because money is so often 
wrongfully come by). Mark my words. I assure you 
that the line of action I recommend will turn out good 
policy as well as right principle. If you do those who 
need what you possess a good turn now, they will be 
able and willing to do you a good turn hereafter. 
When you get from death notice to quit, they will 
receive you into the eternal tents where they dwell 
in peace and joy with Abraham. Your beneficiaries 
now, they will become hereafter your benefactors.” 
Perhaps a fourth thing may here be pointed out. It is 
this: the Church herself may become the Unjust 
Steward by lowering her Lord’s claims upon the faith 


118 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


and obedience of men in order to gain their favor. 
This matter of asking for their money is not very 
popular with some people. In some congregations 
there are not a few members who respond to such a 
request, “You are always asking for money.” Quite 
true, because, as we have seen, quite necessary. If a 
Home Mission Board or any other Board were not 
to ask the Lord’s people for money with which to do 
the Lord’s work or if they were to ask for less than 
the least amount needed to carry on that work,—and 
they do not ask for more than that—such a Board 
would be an Unjust Steward—unjust both to the Lord 
and to His work entrusted to it. And any pastor or 
other responsible church official who would “‘pass up” 
such a request in order to protect the pocketbooks of 
those of his people who give grudgingly, that he might 
curry favor and stand well with them, is likewise an 
Unjust Steward, and on the day of reckoning he will 
be obliged to give an account to his Lord. 

The need of money for the prosecution of our Home 
Mission work cannot be too strongly emphasized. The 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension can- 
not extend its operations over its truly continental 
territory, it cannot enter open doors, it cannot answer 
appealing calls, because it has not the money; and 
the same thing is true of all the other Mission Boards. 
“The field is extensive,” they say, “the opportunities 
are abundant, the demands are urgent and insistent. 
These cry aloud to our people that they consecrate 
their sons and substance for the extension of the King- 
dom of our Christ. We dare not continue to live at the 
old dying rate. The effort must be adequate to the 


ITS FINANCES 119 


enterprise. We have, indeed, been able to meet all 
expenses, with a small balance to our credit; but we 
have done so at the expense of the cause we have been 
appointed to advance. There has, indeed, been pro- 
gress, and that in a marked degree; but the opportuni- 
ties have far outstripped our activities.” 

The Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
sion has three main sources of financial income, and 
upon these it is almost wholly dependent for the means 
to support the work with whose administration it 
is entrusted. 

The chief and most reliable of these sources is, of 
~ course, the regular apportionment which is authorized 
by, and the amount of which is determined by the 
United Lutheran Church in America in convention 
assembled. This apportionment, which always repre- 
sents the minimum amount required for carrying on 
the work, is assumed by the several constituent synods 
and their respective quotas are then apportioned to 
their several congregations. Consequently, when there 
is a considerable deficit in the amount expected from 
this source, it seriously hinders the Board in the suc- 
cessful prosecution of the work, both as to its extent 
and its efficiency. It really means actual and far- 
reaching disaster to the most important interest of 
the Church. Because of this fact there should always 
be the most faithful and conscientious effort on the 
part of every pastor and congregation to raise the full 
amount of the apportionment. 

The second important source of income is that of 
legacies. This source has not been nearly as produc- 
tive of large results as in some of the other denomina- 


120 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


tions. It is certainly to be regretted that so small an 
amount of the money devoted to Christian benefactions 
is derived from this source. Whatever may have been 
the causes which have contributed to this undesirable 
condition, the time has come when our people should 
be diligently instructed in reference to the important 
duty of Christian stewardship. The obligation to 
recognize the imperative claims of God and His 
Church upon the temporal possessions of His servants 
should be impressed upon their hearts and consciences 
with sufficient urgency and appeal to inspire them 
with a proper appreciation of that duty. 

A third source of income is the annuity gift. This 
method of contributing to benevolent objects is of com- 
paratively recent origin. By this method persons who 
are interested in the work of the Board of Home Mis- 
sions and Church Extension and are desirous of giv- 
ing a portion of their estate to aid in the support of 
these causes, but who may be dependent upon the in- 
come from their estates for their living, may devote 
such a portion of their possessions as they may desire: 
on condition that they shall receive a certain fixed 
annuity during their lifetime, with the understanding 
that at their death the principal shall become the 
property of the Board. This is a plan of investment 
in Christian benevolence which is not only attractive 
but absolutely safe, and it has the guarantee that the 
gift will reach the destination intended and accom- 
plish the purpose desired. This annuity gift plan 
should be more largely employed. It should commend 
itself to those who contemplate leaving money to 
causes of Church benevolence by will. 


ITS FINANCES 121 


It will be instructive and of interest to learn the 
total sums of receipts and expenditures of the several 
Boards for a recent single year, as well as the appor- 
tioned annual budget for the years immediately ahead. 
In each case the receipts include the balance in the 
bank at the beginning of the fiscal year.. The fiscal 
year itself is the one ending July 31, 1924. 

The receipts of the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension were $627,651.34, of which $332,000 
was received on account of apportionment, $13,600 as 
Donations, and $18,000 as Annuity Gifts. The dis- 
bursements were $530,126.62, the first three items be- 
ing those of $44,800 in donations to churches, $140,000 
in loans to churches, $227,800 in salaries to mission- 
aries. The total receipts for the Missions Fund of 
the Northwestern Mission Board for the same period 
were $46,669.30 and the disbursements were $44,- 
951.08; Immigrants Board, receipts, General Fund, 
$50,361.19 disbursements, $48,816.97; West Indies 
Board, receipts, $64,648.29, disbursements, $65,189.72 ; 
Committee on Jewish Missions, receipts, $18,669.63, 
disbursements, $17,796.73. 

The apportioned annual budget for the Home Mis- 
sion cause for the years 1926 and 1927 is as follows: 
Board of Home Missions and Church Extension, $538,- 
000, being 26.90 per cent. of the whole budget; North- 
western Missions, $75,000, 3.75 per cent.; Immigrants 
Mission, $52,000, 2.60 per cent.; West Indies Missions, 
$77,000, 3.85 per cent.; Jewish Missions, $19,000, .95 
per cent. Total apportionment for the Home Mission 
Enterprise, $761,000, being 38.05 per cent. of the 


122 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


entire budget apportioned by the United Lutheran 
Church in America. 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


1. What is the need of money in carrying on the Home Mis- 
sion Enterprise? 

2. What is the relation between the furnishing of men and of 
money? 

3. What is the teaching of the parable of the Unjust Steward? 

4, What statement of their financial case is made by the Home 
Mission Boards? 

5. What are the three main sources of financial income? 

6. What were the receipts and disbursements of the Home Mis- 
sion Board in 1923-1924? 

7. What is the apportioned annual budget for the Home Mis- 
sion cause for 1926 and 1927? 


CHAPTER VII 
ITS FRUITAGE 


The Lutheran Church has always been pre-emi- 
nently a missionary church. Both at home and abroad 
it has carried the saving Gospel to thousands of men 
and women who have been without a knowledge of the 
Redeemer. Beginning as “Foreign Missions’ of a 
sort—for the earliest Lutherans in this country, as 
well as other settlers and settlements, were first served 
by pastors sent from Europe—it long ago developed 
an agency of its own and itself carried on the Home 
Enterprise. For Lutherans were among the very first 
to emigrate to this new land of promise. In the provi- 
dence of God the discovery of this Western world was 
made just when a refuge was most needed for those 
who, for conscience’s sake, became exiles. As early as 
1619, Danish Lutherans landed in the Hudson Bay 
region. Shortly afterward Lutherans appeared in 
New Amsterdam (now New York City), where they 
suffered persecution. Then came the Swedes along 
the Delaware in 1638, and then the Germans in Penn- 
sylvania and the Salzburgers in Georgia, while the 
Danish Lutherans had already made for themselves 
a new home in the West Indies in 1666. In the begin- 
ning, it is true, and for many a lamentable year there- 
after, little progress was made by our Church in this 
country—the movement was rather retrograde. Irre- 
parable losses were sustained, due to the complication 
caused by the several languages—Danish, Swedish, 

123 


i : : ee 
ms at 


“4 


124 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


German, English—as well as to the lack of pastors 
and of funds with which to prosecute and support the 
work. These leaks never yet have been entirely 
stopped, and for pretty much the same reasons. But 
in the course of time our Church “found” itself, or- 
ganized, and applied itself to the Home Mission task. 
With the result that the field has at least measurably 
been occupied and the Church is now prepared as 
never before to extend its operations and take fuller 
possession. 

The fact is that no cause of Church benevolence, 
in the character and abundance of its splendid fruit- 
age, has yielded so richly as Home Missions. The 
enlargement and achievements of our Church in the 
homeland is very largely the golden fruitage of Home 
Mission planting. From the initial labors of the 
Patriarch Muhlenberg—Home Mission Pioneer on the 
eastern seaboard—with his inspiring watchword, 
Ecclesia plantanda, “The Church must be planted,” 
to the present day, our Church has traversed a vast 
continent, led by the star of Home Missions; and in 
her radiant path have sprung into life churches and 
colleges and seminaries and institutions of charity and 
mercy, which have rendered invaluable service to mul- 
titudes and trained millions of souls for Christian 
service. 

This assertion is supported by the actual figures. 
In 1800 the Lutheran Church in the United States and 
Canada numbered 50 ministers, 300 congregations and 
20,000 members; in 1850, 575 ministers, 1,500 con- 
gregations and 175,000 members; in 1923, 10,379 min- 
isters, 15,444 congregations and 2,567,000 members. 





WEST INDIES 
CHURCH 


ITALIAN MISSION, ERIE, PA. 





SISTER EMMA WITH HER HELPERS AND ORPHAN 
GIRLS 


Types of Mission Work 





MISSION, STATESVILLE, N. C. 





TRINITY CHURCH, ST. PETERSBURG, FLA, 


Missions in the South 


ITS FRUITAGE 125 


Sixty years ago the membership of the several bodies 
now merged into the United Lutheran Church was 
153,000. Now it is 840,000. Then it had 1,500 
churches; now 3,812. Then its western bounds were 
the Father of Waters; now it has crossed the vast 
plains and mountains beyond and erected its altars on 
the shores of the Pacific Ocean and in the Canadian 
Provinces, while on the south the Christian faith, as 
confessed by our Church, is heralded on the islands 
whose shores are washed by the waters of the Gulf 
of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. On this new field 
the Home Mission Boards have planted literally thou- 
sands of churches, many of which have become self- 
supporting and are fruitful in all good works. Entire 
synods are the fruit of Home Mission planting. Be- 
yond the Mississippi eight synods have been organized 
out of nearly 400 churches planted by Home Missions. 
Probably three-fifths of our churches, as has already 
been stated, owe their growth into strength to the 
initial aid and fostering care of Home Mission agen- 
cies. As we have seen, of the eighty-three congrega- 
tions constituting the three synods in the Western 
District of the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension, no fewer than eighty were of Home Mis- 
sion origin. In the last biennium alone (1922-1924) 
sixty-two new missions received regular appropria- 
tions from the Home Mission Board and thirty addi- 
tional missions were organized. Had the congrega- 
tions thus organized been in one State and formed 
into a new synod, they would actually have consti- 
tuted a body numbering more parishes than sixteen 
of the thirty-six synods of the United Lutheran 


126 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


Church. Moreover, in that same period forty-nine 
missions developed into sufficient strength to assume 
entire support. These were added to the self-sustain- 
ing list and they in turn have become contributors to 
the cause and help to carry the good work forward. 

Furthermore: The mission crop now standing on 
the field and ripening to self-sustentation must also be 
considered. This also is a part of the fruitage. The 
mission churches now under the care of the various 
Boards number as many as 546—over half a thousand. 
The Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 
is caring for 378; the Northwestern Board for 106; 
the Immigrants Mission Board for 39. The West 
Indies Board for 19. The Committee on Jewish Mis- 
sions for 4. The number of members in these mission 
churches approaches 100,000, and the property value 
sums up to many thousands of dollars. 

Nor is this the whole story. Part of the story must 
remain untold, for there is a spiritual fruitage in 
saved souls and Christian graces and virtues which 
cannot be grasped and tabulated. But this may be 
said: the Home Mission contribution to the growth 
of the Church is larger than any other source or fac- 
tor whatsoever. In 1923 the average adult addition 
to the membership of the self-supporting congrega- 
tions in the synods functioning in Home Mission work 
through the Board of Home Missions was 9.9 per 
cent.; for the mission congregations themselves it 
was 17.5 per cent. “The average Home Mission 
church is the most consistently effective evangelistic 
force the United Lutheran Church has.” 

Especially rapid has been the growth and abundant 


ITS FRUITAGE 127 


the fruitage in the cities of our land, as in New York, 
where, in 1807, there were two Lutheran congrega- 
tions; in 1852, ten; in 1865, twenty-six; now Greater 
New York has one hundred and sixty-six Lutheran 
churches connected with the several general bodies, 
having a membership of 140,000 souls. In the city 
of Baltimore forty years ago there were six churches 
of the General Synod, with a total membership of 
2,093. At the present time (1924) there are thirty- 
three churches with a total membership of 13,400. Of 
these churches twenty-two of the twenty-six organized 
‘since 1883 were established under the auspices of 
Home Missions. These two instances are taken at 
random. Such and such like gratifying progress, 
largely the result of Home Mission effort, has been 
duplicated in the other large cities of our land, as 
in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Minne- 
apolis, Buffalo, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and 
many others. 

Example has already been given (as in the case of 
the mission at Queens, Long Island, in the Eastern 
District) of individual growth, from the planting of 
the seed to the fruitage which rapidly and richly 
followed. A few other instances may here be cited— 
for they are informing and stimulating. In the same 
district, at Flushing, Long Island, mission work was 
begun in June of 1924, services being conducted in the 
parish house of the Episcopal Church, which was 
closed for the summer. During June, July and August 
the average attendance was over fifty and the plate 
offerings on the ten Sundays amounted to $565, an 
average of $56.50 per Sunday. In the middle of 


128 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


August the congregation bought a beautiful corner 
lot on the main thoroughfare for $22,000, receiving 
from the Board of Home Missions and Church Exten- 
sion a non-interest-bearing loan of $5,000, which will 
be repaid by a self-sustaining congregation in five 
years. The Board pays most of the pastor’s salary. 

Rev. H. H. Weber, who was later to become the 
General Secretary of the Board of Home Missions 
and Church Extension, was commissioned home mis- 
sionary for southwestern Baltimore. This was in 
1885. In October of that year he organized Grace 
Lutheran Church with forty-one members. At the end 
of three years the congregation had reached 480, and 
the enrollment of the Sunday school had risen to 700. 
At that time the mission assumed self-support. 

In 1916 lots were purchased in a suburb of Chicago 
by Rev. J. F. Seibert, then Synodical Superintendent 
of the Northern Illinois Synod, now General Secretary 
of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension. 
War held up the development. In the spring of 1920 
the erection of a brick Bungalow Chapel was begun 
at a cost of $11,000. The church was dedicated Sep- 
tember 12, 1920, and on the same day a congregation 
was organized with fifty-one charter members and 
eighty-five scholars in the Sunday school. A pastor 
had been called on May 1, 1920. In 1923 the congre- 
gation numbered 427 communicant members, with a 
Sunday school enrollment of 679, exclusive of Cradle 
Roll and Home Departments. In one year the con- 
gregation had outgrown the Bungalow Chapel and 
today it worships in a splendid $135,000 church, hav- 
ing a seating capacity of 1,050. In the first fifteen 


ITS FRUITAGE 129 


months the congregation repaid to the Synodical 
Board all the money it had invested in the Bungalow 
Chapel. “The congregation is deeply grateful to the 
Home Mission Board for aid received. As to whether 
it was a good investment: this year (1923) the sum 
of $3,000 will be paid to Benevolence and the United 
Lutheran Church; and as the congregation grows, the 
sum will grow each year. Spiritually, the results can- 
not be estimated; thousands of souls will be brought 
to Christ.” 

Too much credit cannot be given to the faithful 
home missionaries whose faith worked by love—and 
~ who loved to work. To them, under God, the fruitage 
is largely due. Even before the coming of Muhlenberg 
the names of workmen like W. C. Berkenmeyer and 
Daniel Falkner and John Caspar Stoever, Sr., and 
John Caspar Stoever, Jr., and Anthony Jacob Henkel 
and John Christian Schultz are to be held in honor 
and lasting remembrance. But it was Henry Melchior 
Muhlenberg who, by his extensive and indefatigable 
labors, earned for himself the title of the Patriarch 
of the Lutheran Church in America and that of the 
American Home Mission Pioneer. It has been said of 
him: “He who sent Moses to His people groaning in 
Egypt, who sent out Paul far hence to the Gentiles 
sitting in darkness, who raised up Luther with the 
light of His Word for those who were watching for 
the dawn, now also, in answer to many prayers, 
brought forth a deliverer and an apostle for America, 
a man combining in himself to a marvelous extent the 
qualities indispensable for the work to be accom- 
plished, a man deeply penetrated by the pietistic 


130 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


spirit, and who as a manifest instrument of Providence 
was destined to build from the precious, but chaotic 
and scattered elements, the foundations of the Luth- 
eran Church in the new world.” 

Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, answering 
a call to come to America, arrived September 23, 1742. 
He landed at Charleston, South Carolina, visited the 
Salzburgers at Ebenezer, Georgia, and then proceeded 
to Philadelphia. His name is forever linked with the 
beginning of organized Lutheranism in America. His 
work was to bring the primitive congregations into 
order, to infuse into them a strong piety and true 
church life, to provide them with good pastors, to 
introduce schools for the education of the children, 
and to preserve and establish the Christian home. His 
activities included the States,of New York, New Jer- 
sey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. On August 26, 
1748, Muhlenberg and six other ministers and lay 
delegates of free congregations organized the Synod 
of Pennsylvania, the first Lutheran Synod in this 
country. This was the most important event in the 
history of the American Lutheran Church in the 
eighteenth century. 

Muhlenberg has had many eminent and worthy suc- 
cessors, who have sacrificed without stint and labored 
without rest to plant the Lutheran Church in this 
country. Among the outstanding pioneers and pro- 
moters of missions on this field may be named Rev. 
Paul Henkel, Dr. W. A. Passavant, Dr. S. B. Barnitz, 
Dr. H. L. Yarger. These are but a few names among 
the many on the Home Mission roll of honor: the 
names of all the devoted men who sowed and watered 


ITS FRUITAGE 131 


and planted—while, in the majority of cases, other 
men reaped the increase which God gave—are written 
in the book of life. 

Someone, writing in a missionary periodical of an- 
other denomination in the interest of Home Missions, 
said: “A great want of our Church is more biographies 
of Home Missionaries; of men who have been the 
heroic self-sacrificing pioneers in planting the Church 
on the ever-retreating frontiers.” Upon this state- 
ment another writer has made the comment: “We fail 
adequately to understand any movement until we get 
back to its individual originators and promoters. We 
miss the vital force of Home Missions until we make 
the acquaintance of the agents who set the processes 
of Christian conquest in motion. Foreign Mission 
literature is rich in this department and owes much 
of the ascendancy which it has gained in the minds 
of Christian people to this source. The foreign work 
doubtless has some advantage in this respect, involv- 
ing in its early history many elements of romance and 
tragedy. There have been, however, characters as 
heroic, sufferings as tragic, and triumphs as great in 
the home work as in the foreign. Some day some one 
will write the epic of the Home Mission heroes—or 
eall it the new Book of Martyrs—of Christian heroic 
men who could say and did say with the great apos- 
tolic missionary, St. Paul, in the face of hardships and 
difficulties and self-denials and perils; ‘But none of 
these things move me, neither count I my life dear 
unto myself, so that I might finish my course with 
joy, and the ministry which I have received of the 
Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God.’ ”’ 


132 


Ol co bo ee 


10. 


A HOME ENTERPRISE 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


. Sketch the career of our Lutheran Church in this country. 


What was the watchword of the Patriarch Muhlenberg? 


. At what rate has our Church grown in the United States? 
- What has been its growth in the cities? 
. To what degree have Home Missions figured in the growth 


of our Church in the cities and in the country at large? 


. Give some individual instances of growth. 
- Who were some of the Pioneer Home Missionaries? 
. Tell something of the life and labors of the Patriarch Muh- 


lenberg. 


. In more recent times whose names are on the Home Mis- 


sion honor roll? 
What particular biography remains to be written? 


CHAPTER VIII 
ITS FUTURE 


The future of the Home Mission Enterprise has the 
past as its background and is—or will be—the present 
itself in projection. The beginnings of the Home Mis- 
sion movement were fraught with peculiar difficulties 
and the progress was slow. But the Church has 
“speeded up” its Home Mission program and the cause 
is continually gathering momentum and the “business” 
is increasing in volume and, so to speak, is making 
greater profits and paying higher dividends. The 
program now includes almost every State in the 
Union, most of the Provinces of Canada, Porto Rico 
and the Virgin Islands. Into the great cities and 
smaller towns as well as into the neglected rural com- 
munities, we have gone with good and gratifying suc- 
cess. Sunday schools have been organized, congrega- 
tions established, churches built, and there has been a 
corresponding increase in interest and financial sup- 
port that promise well for the years to come. More- 
over, the mission of the Church to our immigrant 
population is well organized—the Gospel being 
preached in at least nine languages—and is lengthen- 
ing its cords and strengthening its stakes. Altogether, 
there is every reason to thank God and take courage. 

But there still remains very much land to be pos- 
sessed. Over 60,000,000 of our people today are not 
reached by the Gospel, and among them our own house- 

133 


134 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


hold of faith is largely represented. Never since the 
discovery of America has there been greater spiritual 
need than at this very time—not to say patriotic need 
—nor more urgent demand for the most earnest and 
aggressive use of the evangelistic agencies and forces 
of the Church to carry the saving Gospel to these mil- 
lions not touched by the ministries of the Church. This 
is true of the Christian Church of America in general 
and of our own Church in particular, which will forego 
one of the finest opportunities in all its history and 
shirk a most grave responsibility if it falters in the 
execution of its God-given Home Mission task in its 
fullest measure. Should our beloved Church fail to 
be actuated by the holy ambition to share in the su- 
premely important work of bringing our land to a 
knowledge of the Gospel which saves and sanctifies, it 
would be recreant to its duty and disloyal to its Lord, 
for the cause of Home Missions is a part of Christ’s 
own plan for the planting of His Church and the ex- 
tension of His Kingdom. The proclamation of His Gos- 
pel in new fields and the evangelization of the nation 
are a part of His great missionary command, which 
has as its object the salvation of all mankind. 

It is the simple truth that the future of our Church, 
—its achievements, its glory,—is bound up with and 
will be determined by the character and extent of its 
Home Mission activity. ‘As goes Home Missions, so 
goes the Church.” The Home Mission Boards and the 
large majority of the pastors have caught the vision 
of this boundless missionary task and are making 
every effort to accomplish it. But in this respect the 
ministry is far in advance of the generality of the 


ITS FUTURE 135 


laity. Our laity need to realize five things: (1) That 
the opportunity and the necessity at this critical hour 
in our nation’s life for the multiplication of spiritual 
forces are abundant and imperative, and challenge the 
Church and every churchman to an aggressive forward 
movement. (2) That the propagation of our precious 
faith, the growth of our dear old Church in this west- 
ern land and the Christianization of this mighty nation 
are largely conditioned by the effective prosecution of 
Home Missions. (3) That millions of scattered and 
unchurched members of our own household of faith— 
practically as sheep without a shepherd—cannot be 
reached by the ministration of the Gospel save through 
Home Mission effort. (4) That the United Lutheran 
Church recognizes the exceedingly great importance 
of its Home Mission work by appointing appropriate 
Boards for its prosecution and providing a generous 
apportionment for its accomplishment. (5) That the 
Boards to which the Church has entrusted its admin- 
istration of this great enterprise are helpless to exe- 
cute it unless every congregation—which includes 
pastor, church officers and all the members—heeds 
their earnest plea to support this work adequately 
with the full amount of the apportionment and with 
special gifts, whether out-and-out donations or an- 
nuities or bequests by will. 

Nor is money the only thing which is needed. Su- 
perior to the need of money is the need of men. What 
use is there for a synodical field missionary to locate 
a promising mission field in city or countfy, among 
this group of people or among that, if there is no 
regular minister available to carry on the work? This 


136 A HOME ENTERPRISE 


is what hinders most of all—the lack of men. Given 
the men, the funds for their support, upon definite 
appeal, will not fail to be contributed. After all and 
in the last resort, it is from the laymen and laywomen 
of the Church, the people in the pews, that the men 
and the means for the performance of the vast Home 
Mission enterprise must be forthcoming. When our 
people of means give of their means; when our people 
having sons give of their sons; when all our people 
with means and sons or without them, give their fer- 
vent effectual prayers—praying the prayer the Lord 
Jesus Himself has given them to pray, “Thy Kingdom 
come, Thy will be done”’—then a better and brighter 
day for our Home Mission cause will have dawned and 
its future will be secure. 


“Give of thy sons to bear the message glorious; 
Give of thy wealth to speed them on their way; 
Pour out thy soul for them in prayer victorious; 
And haste the coming of the glorious day. 


“He comes again: O Zion ere thou meet Him, 
Make known to every heart His saving grace; 
Let none whom He hath ransomed fail to greet Him, 
Through thy neglect, unfit to see His face.” 


QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND DISCUSSION 


. What are the chapter headings in this book? 

. What reason has our Church to thank God and take courage? 

. Is the Home Mission work a finished task? 

. In what does the hope of our Church in the future lie? 

. What five things do our laymen need to realize? 

. What is the need of men and means, if the future is to be 
made secure? 

7. Recite the two stanzas of the hymn with which this book 

concludes. ; 


a or WN KE 











cas 


ri ee 





* 


NNR 
ey ey el 


Aa ae 
De ay nee cal 
; ad rs “ ; 
‘ ta Ta i 
ane Pe 


nN Se 
hana 





NT 


me ee 


we 


os 


- 








4 amen Ne. pa ta used hie tte eee aET Ge ae hae nae rn itlng tia trap ms te gn erent 4 “ 
spa peaeet Mert se beeen siete seein pezmnn santrree ste Se Seen Se Sr iotiginese 
Sonny tener eye tnt hen ate De OL, Se AY, 


Pe AR MERE ITE ORE 
es ar Res Bi OS 
Te aetenteep ee 

- f 





wn eter 


Ss = a ee pene anaenn eee ? 
Scee near na tn oat aed wean aes mt AEE OUE PADRE We AON eT TN ns Sete ar ney 


yeahs 








‘ar Soret “ fr, vo emene 
valictpslorts onsets srenpurmrrinwinces eres lagleth ; 
: pees : 
pe faae tors ith oesecser salt taapies may fe 


Ale. Ph, OS etre than he ey tPF 


